


Grey Zone

by mrtvejpes



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Anal Sex, Angst and Humor, Bottom Chae Hyungwon, Drunk Sex, Hyungwon Is an Interrogator, M/M, Minhyuk Is a Suspect, Non-Chronological, One-Sided Attraction, Past One-Sided Hyungwon/Hyunwoo, Plot Plot Plot but also Wait for That Porn, Post-War, Quidditch, Top Lee Minhyuk, Underage Drinking, Unresolved Sexual Tension, minor kiho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2019-07-04 14:49:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15843516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrtvejpes/pseuds/mrtvejpes
Summary: It looked like the Auror Department had scored themselves another suspect that day.'It must be a good one,' thought Hyungwon. 'Everyone is glowing.'





	1. I.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, pay attention to the timeline.  
> 2002 is the present.

_2002_

The sound of the alarm clock pierced through the silence just like it did every twenty-four hours. He reached out and turned the thing off. Still sleepy, he forgot about the old wound. A thrash throbbed down his arm. His flesh stiffened. His veins hurt.

He got up. He didn't bother to raise the blinds. It was useless, seeing that he never got home earlier than by nightfall, and Hyungwon disliked doing useless things.

He headed to the bathroom. Dull orange light forced him to squint. He washed his face.

Just like any other morning.

The coffee he made afterwards was bitter, sealing his lips over. He had run out of sugar. Was it today, or had he drunk this shit unsweetened even yesterday and the day before?

Oh, well.

He stepped into the fireplace. As per usual, he travelled on an empty stomach. The Floo Network spat him out ashy and shabby. Shabbier than he had entered it. Blinking soft dust off his lashes, Hyungwon stepped out the hearth and into the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. He dusted the remainder of ash and Floo Powder off his shoulders. He did it with his right hand again, and it made him hiss. He let his arm drop and kept it dead at his side. Tentatively, he ran his left hand along the length of his wand, grazing the carvings waving alongside the handle. He wore the thing in his left pocket, silent but alert as a soldier on standby.

The least he could do was keep the wand ready when his hand wasn't.

Gilded fireplaces glittered down the walls. Even this early, people were already moving in streams; left and right, to and fro.

He passed the staircase and walked up to a line of elevators. He chose the one with the smallest queue. The scissor gate opened in front of him, a rich chunk of gold-glazed metal. He walked in. The cage closed. Inside, there was no one but him and two deputies, their wilted mouths discussing a _Daily Prophet_ article. Hyungwon didn't join the conversation.

The elevator rattled and rose; and then it moved in all directions. More people got on and off. The tight space became crowded. Hyungwon saw men with fat briefcases, fat stomachs, and even fatter paychecks. He saw Aurors who were all laughter before they got going, setting off for another great adventure.

He got off. The floor he worked on stank of paper, sweat, and powder. It stank of arduous working hours and of people who had to work them. The stench had seeped into him, too.

Smoke hung in the office. Hyungwon's mouth thinned at the sight. He got hold of a print of today's newspaper and put out a heap of smouldering Howlers that lay on his desk.

“Morning,” chirped Kihyun, his chirpiness only there to piss everyone off. It worked.

Hyungwon made an obligatory sound that could be interpreted as a somewhat polite greeting. He sat behind the desk and swept the cinders off with his sleeve. Not seeing the point in postponing the inevitable, he opened the first envelope. It was curled at the edges, blackened from smouldering for too long.

He threw a look at Kihyun, then at the empty chair by the window. Kihyun, as punctual as death, had yet to arrive at work later than Hyungwon. The other Slytherin who shared the office with them, Yoongi, always came late. The older man rarely ever showed up before street lamps went pale in the sunlight. Hyungwon came on time every day, thought it cost him quite a bit of will to live.

To coexist with two Slytherins day by day cost him all of it.

The space was small. Kihyun's bureau, a cow-sized behemoth made of eben, took up a good third of the office. It was organized, but littered with empty cups, interrogation records, and a neatly stacked pile of detective novels.

Hyungwon wondered what irritated him more. The ostentatious care with which Kihyun had had the monstrosity moved here from the marble manor he lived in, or those books which mocked their job. Maybe both. Maybe it was Kihyun who irritated him. Still, it was a slightly less ireful sight than Yoongi's unoccupied chair, which had Hyungwon thinking of all the sleep he was missing.

The novels Kihyun kept on his desk were a close second, though. B-rated, with their ghastly covers blinking at Hyungwon to deride him, the books lay there almost as a reminder that this job was only temporary for Kihyun – a funny sort of career step. He was already working his way up. He had the chance to leave, unlike Hyungwon. And then, with his crippled hand, Hyungwon would be expected to serve him his afternoon tea on a shaking tray.

But at least when Kihyun leaves, the bureau leaves, too.

Hyungwon took a sip of what was his second coffee that day. There was sugar in it, but so were coffee dregs. Seven more hours and fifty minutes of this shit.

Walled in by filing cabinets and bookcases, Hyungwon went through his correspondence. It was all the same. The department he worked in dealt with post-war politics. Hyungwon and his colleagues pursued war criminals regardless of their pedigree or connections. It seemed that their mission was fine with the general public unless it was a Gryffindor who contributed to the task. No one but Hyungwon was receiving several Howlers a day, smothering him with smoke and emotional blackmail alike. Sixteen letters from war widows and orphans passed through his hands that morning, accusing him of reverse racism and of being biased against pure-blood families.

He'd consider it funny if Kihyun didn't consider it even funnier.

“They're still riding your dick about the thing you said in the _Prophet_ , aren't they,” remarked the prim prick not so primly.

“Yep.”

Hyungwon had been foolish enough to speak the truth during that one interview for the _Daily Prophet_. He supposed it was a flaw of his. He was silent until he wasn't.

All he had said back then was what the statistics had been telling him since the very beginning of the post-war trials and interrogations. There was no sugarcoating it. The majority of war criminals had ties to the Slytherin House, and those who didn't rarely ever belonged to mixed families. So far, the Investigation Department had been able to convict only two Muggle-borns. Hyungwon had criticized the two in particular just as bluntly in the interview as he had criticized the pure-blood community, focusing on the pure irony of joining a hateful group that hated your own “impure” descent. But of course, that wasn't what ended up being highlighted in the article.

Thus, the fucking mail.

He reckoned there would be no Howlers now if it had been Kihyun or Yoongi speaking up about the issue.

It had been bad after the battle. It still was. But somehow, the Dark Side had managed to glean the most out of it, as it always did. Look at how many of _us_ have suffered. Look at how we are being discriminated against by the Ministry and all those mean Gryffindors. Look at us repenting. We didn't want this. We didn't know. We were forced to kill Muggles and children and someone put a spell on me and I was never there and I never met the victim and my mother died fighting for the good cause and I guess the gardener did it, because it sure wasn't me.

Hyungwon had heard it all before.

He sat at the desk until lunch break, crumpling half-burnt pieces of parchment into small balls.

He looked up. A fine spiderweb hung from the ceiling. A majestic spider was crawling from one corner to the other, dragging a dried up fly with it.

He looked down. Yoongi's pale hands were thumbing through a folder of papers, unfolding like spider lilies.

He looked ahead. Just like any other day at the same hour, Kihyun checked his silver watch and got up to let them know it was time to eat.

They left the office. Hyungwon winced. The fingers of his right hand went rigid when he tried to lock the door. Jingling hard against the hardwood floor, the whole set of keys fell from his hand. No one commented on it.

It was still a novel feeling even after four years – to be useless.

When they got off the elevator, each of them went his separate way. Both Slytherin men headed towards one of the Atrium fireplaces, probably to go to a fancy restaurant; or, in Yoongi's case, to any remotely empty restaurant where he could doze off for a minute.

Hyungwon jinked his way through the Atrium, avoiding the throng as well as he could.

The dining hall was packed. Thursdays were infamous for the afters which were regularly served after lunch. The deserts looked like they might give him indigestion, and they usually did. He still grabbed one as he shuffled on in the queue.

One time, Kihyun had deigned to go to the dining hall with him. He had taken one look at the pastries and given such an incinerating little laugh that Hyungwon had grappled with two servings just to spite him.

Fun times. Hyungwon was still expecting an ulcer to come out of that.

Today, Kihyun was probably feasting on his favourite honey and lime chicken and a glass of chilled white wine. But Hyungwon got to eat for free, so who was the real winner here.

The Auror table gurgled with voices. Glass and silverware and laughter alike tinkled and grabbed everyone's attention. It looked like the Auror Department had scored themselves another suspect that day.

It must be a good one, thought Hyungwon. Everyone was _glowing_.

He sat alone, polishing off the plate. Before he got to the dessert, Changkyun plopped down on the bench across from him and stole it. A shiny Auror badge iridesced on the young man's chest as he sat sprawled there. They exchanged a few words while Changkyun dove into the dessert, his boyish stomach steely enough to take it.

That was how Hyungwon found out that Lee Minhyuk had been brought to the Ministry in shackles.

 

_1998_

In 1998, Hyungwon's contract with Puddlemere United was about to expire.

He wasn't worried. At twenty-one, he had a somewhat dazed look about him _and_ his physique left a lot to be desired, but he was as healthy as any other man of his age – and focused when on the field. What he lacked in competitiveness and ambition, he made up for with his steady performance. He was too graceful to slip. Too limber to let the opponent score.

The manager knew it. Hyungwon wasn't the youngest captain in the team's history for nothing, after all.

But yeah. Hyungwon was aware that scoring that title wasn't all his own doing. He had lucked out. The team had comprised mostly of aging players when he had first joined in, and he knew his youth had been a factor in even making it to the final line-up.

It had been an era of great changes. An inrush of talented graduates had left Hogwarts, bringing brand new techniques and enthusiasm to the game. One by one, the Puddlemere legends and veterans ended up being replaced by younger players until there was no one left, and Hyungwon watched them all go. Replaced by new faces, good-looking faces. It wasn't enough to be just skilled anymore.

Hyungwon never let the title go to his head. Captain or not, he still had very few opportunities to make decisions as a newbie. All he had to do was represent the team and play better than the opposing team's Keeper.

So he just carried on the way he always had.

Somehow, it worked.

It helped that his face gazed down from posters and screens serious and unattainable, so photogenic that their fan base's demographics had diversified quite a bit within the past four years.

The coach in particular couldn't praise Hyungwon's humble smile enough. (He smiled humbly whenever she mentioned it.)

He had a career ahead of him whose greatness he couldn't quite imagine, not just yet. And with it, fame and frail joints and chilled bones. He longed for all of it when he was Hyungwon the Keeper, though when he was just Hyungwon, he had other things to long for.

Peace, for one.

The team had been winning gold after gold during those four years since he'd joined in, but that wasn't the only reason the decade was named the Golden Era of Quidditch. Sports in general had yet to gain so many devotees as they did nowadays, so many fans who wanted to experience a rush of thrill that didn't end in murder or a broken wand or being disowned. The Golden Era of Quidditch was the darkest era of the wizarding world. No wonder people paid so much to forget that.

 

 

It was spring. White frost covered the training field. Whenever it drizzled, the drops turned icy, making it hard to see. The cold scarred Hyungwon's skin, painting pale branches all over it as he soared. This spring was Hyungwon's coldest yet. The World Cup was near.

It was roughly around that time that Lee Minhyuk joined Puddlemere United after terminating his ties to The Falmouth Falcons.

The decision was so sudden that Hyungwon didn't even have time to be pissed.

Hyungwon was used to coexisting with Slytherins. His school years had taught him that. So when he walked up to the team to give out directions, a bright _1_ adorning his back, no one could discern a single shadow of hostility _or_ friendliness between him and the Chaser with a _4_ on his uniform, simply because there wasn't any. Hyungwon and Minhyuk would pass the Quaffle betweeh them during training sessions, and go for a beer or two afterwards, and that would be it. They were able to get along. Especially when they didn't talk.

They had hurt each other in the worst of ways when they were boys. But they were adults now.

(But it had only been four years.)

 

 

Morning after morning, the alarm clock in Hyungwon's dorm cut through the silence.

He reached from under the blanket to silence it. From behind a thin wall, he could hear a threatening grumble. He managed to sleep through the first few beeps and wake up both of the Beaters again. Minhyuk was fast asleep in the top bunk, snoring so soundly as thought he had downed an especially strong brew of Sleeping Draught the night before.

Hyungwon rubbed his face. He cracked one window open and sucked in the frigid air. The glass shimmered with rime. Factory chimneys let out columns of smoke. The city lay swallowed in a clustering film of fog. He liked it here although the neighbourhood was grimy.

The problem was the submarine-like dorm. It was small; and small didn't even cut it. It was isolated, and yet without any of the privacy isolation normally offered. Hyungwon could hear people take showers and even piss, the walls so papery that he could probably punch right through them.

And that was saying something.

A few more days, he told himself. Soon, the coach would announce the final line-up for their match against the Norwegian team. And then – they better go home with the trophy.

He turned back into the room, which their manager dared to call a bedroom for two. Crossing the space with two long strides, Hyungwon stopped in front of the bunk bed. He shook Minhyuk's shoulder.

“Get up.”

“Ungh.”

“Get up and try to be quiet. I think I heard Amber and Irene say something about bats and bloody noses.”

“ _Urg-chn._ ”

Hyungwon shook him harder. Kicking, Minhyuk rolled over before he inevitably sat up, knowing that when Hyungwon was up, there was no way in hell anyone else was allowed to stay asleep.

While Hyungwon was changing into his Quidditch uniform, Minhyuk started stretching, moving as if his bones were breaking. His otherwise clear face stared sallow into the slow sunrise.

“What time is it?” he croaked.

“Almost six,” said Hyungwon, feeling as heavy as Minhyuk's voice sounded.

“Fuck off.” Minhyuk fell backwards and wrapped himself into a cocoon.

Not minding him, Hyungwon prepared tea on a portable stove. The idea of something warm in his stomach eventually lured Minhyuk out of bed. He jumped off the top bunk, landing on his toes as quiet as a cat. He drank the tea in one go, though he couldn't help throwing a curious look at the portable stove, squinting at it the way he always did. Well, he wasn't the only one. Except for Gain and Hyungwon, no one in the team came from a half-blood family. The rest of Puddlemeres eyed the tiny stove with more or less open distrust.

Minhyuk threw on his uniform. Without another word, they set out.

They had gotten used to this routine. It wasn't the first time they'd slept alone in the same bedroom.

 

_2002_

He followed Kihyun into the elevator. It descended deeper underground.

If Lee Minhyuk wasn't the national team's ace, he would rot on an even lower floor. Hyungwon tried his best not to scoff at the favouritism.

Enchanted windows lined the corridor that led to the interrogation chamber. Behind each of them, a fake, whitish sun gave off a very sharp shine.

An Auror waited by the chamber, guarding it. His almond-shaped eyes bore into the approaching couple and softened at the sight of Hyungwon, who had been his classmate once. It still felt a little surreal to see Jooheon rise so high in ranks. Not that he didn't deserve the position of the Head Auror, but god, did he used to be a scaredy-cat at Hogwarts.

“Don't tell me you're on the case, too,” exclaimed Jooheon, patting Hyungwon's arm when the duo approached him.

“Our national star deserves the best of the best, doesn't he?”

“I'd say there are some things he deserves more than that,” remarked Jooheon, his handsome features turning fierce. He had little love for war criminals, whether they had been convicted already or not. If he could, he would put all Slytherins behind bars preventively, starting with the tiny one who stood beside them.

Hyungwon couldn't say he didn't share Jooheon's sentiments at least a little bit.

There were no charmed windows inside the interrogation chamber. Actually, there were no windows at all. It pleased Hyungwon. The room glared barren except for a massive metal table in the very middle of it. Leaning against it, Auror Lee Hoseok glanced up to greet the interrogators. Without trying to give himself airs, he stood there short but imposing, his breadth easily overshadowing the Quidditch ace sitting down with his back towards the door.

The two weren't there alone. Another man, larger than either of them, sat sideways beside Minhyuk. He was gazing ahead, one steady palm laid on Minhyuk's shoulder until the door opened. Then he darted a glimpse sideways.

Hyungwon recognized him immediately.

He had joined the Gryffindor Quidditch team because of this man ages ago.

Kihyun shut the door. The chamber grew greyer.

“The suspect has been informed of all charges pressed against him and the right to remain silent,” said Hoseok, following the protocol. His kind voice clashed with his intimidating physique. “Mr Lee's wand shall be temporarily stored and returned were he to prove his innocence,” he finished, visibly glad to drop the frozen language.

“Have you confiscated the suspect's... visitor's wand as well?” inquired Kihyun. He settled down at the table across from Minhyuk and his companion.

“I... well,” said Hoseok, which was explanatory enough.

“We've talked about this, Auror Lee.”

“I know. But we all know each other here,” Hoseok pointed out mildly.

“All the more reason not to trust anyone blindly,” said Kihyun.

Minhyuk smirked in his seat, the grimace almost fond as he regarded his former Slytherin classmate, but he said nothing.

He'd changed.

“It's alright,” said Son Hyunwoo. Very slowly, he pulled out his wand and handed it to Hoseok, pointing the handle at him instead of the tip.

It had been three years since Hyunwoo had resurfaced from whatever country he had been travelling after graduating from Hogwarts. Appearing out of the blue, he'd made it into the national team after laying off Quidditch for over five years. He now occupied the post Hyungwon had once held, as if taking back something he had only lent to the younger man.

Hyungwon remembered leafing through the Daily Prophet not too long after the Battle of Hogwarts and almost dropping the newspaper when Hyunwoo's serious eyes had blinked at him on page nine. The article had called him “The Best Catch(er) of 1999.” Ever since then, Hyunwoo had stolen the public's attention and affection the same way Hyungwon once used to.

It fit. Ten years ago, it had been Hyungwon who had replaced Hyunwoo as the Gryffindor Keeper.

Hyungwon sat down beside Kihyun.

With all five of them there, the air in the chamber seemed strangling. A single light bulb hung above them, erasing their shadows.

It was like that night ten years ago.

“I'm sorry, but you can't stay here during the interview,” said Kihyun, looking up at Hyunwoo.

“Oh. Oh, of course.” Hyunwoo nodded and got up. He clasped Minhyuk's shoulder one more time, giving it a pat. “There must be an explanation for all of this. You'll be out before you know it,” he said quietly.

“I know,” said Minhyuk.

“Auror Lee will keep you company if you'd prefer to wait until the session is over,” Kihyun addressed to Hyunwoo, his gaze cast down as he was already thumbing through a pile of files.

Auror Lee, who was indeed good at keeping people company, flushed before he led Hyunwoo out.

 


	2. II.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, pay attention to the timeline.  
> 2002 is the present.

_1998_

The air burned – but with cold. Hyungwon felt the frosty bite that came with every intake of breath condense in his lungs. The cold crept underneath his dragon hide gloves. It rose off the ground in stifling waves that made his throat dry. Branches hung heavy with rime.

Hyungwon gave a signal and Minhyuk followed him to the edge of the field, flying lower and lower until he got off his broomstick and walked up to his captain. He stepped over unmown snowdrops, careful not to trample them down.

Hyungwon's feet went numb with cold as he waited.

They went to the bleachers and sat down. Reaching for his rucksack, Hyungwon pulled out a thermos flask and poured some tea into its cup-like lid. He sipped a few times before he handed the lid to Minhyuk. They took turns drinking.

“What you just pulled won't be enough when we go against Norway,” Hyungwon spoke up when the silence had gone on for too long, Minhyuk being too busy picking up spring flowers. “This isn't Hogwarts anymore. This is the World Cup. You can't cheat your way up like you used to. If you don't work harder, you'll spend the rest of the season on the bench.”

“I don't think I need your preaching.”

“I think you need every bit of it.”

“I mean, it's lovely that you're so concerned about this sucky Slytherin and all, but you should watch your own back. Tae has been stepping up his game with each training session lately. The coach might just replace you.”

“You could wake me up at midnight and I'd still be more focused than Taehyung.” However sad the statement was, it was true. The Hufflepuff could be undefeatable – but he could also flop at the worst times. One just never knew with him. “The coach knows that. I don't have to be worried about my position.”

“But you're worried about mine?” Minhyuk theatrically clasped his chest. His tone sparkled with sarcasm, just like the ground sparkled with frost. “You know I'm good no matter the position,” he remarked.

Hyungwon glossed over the quip.

“I'm worried because you're a part of the team now.”

“Aw. How motivational of you.”

“You could've used some of this motivational crap back at Hogwarts. Maybe you wouldn't have to repeat the final year.”

The clapback didn't insult Minhyuk. If anything, he gave a snort.

“Yeah, that wasn't my brightest moment. In my defense, that exchange program at Durmstrang was complete bollocks.”

Hyungwon had heard about the Hogwarts-Durmstrang student exchange program so many times that he stopped listening. The cold hard fact stood that Minhyuk had left Hogwarts before his seventh year there only to come back a year later to finish the subjects he had failed at the Bulgarian institute. Hyungwon had learned back then that being Minhyuk's classmate could be as draining as being his rival on the field; or his captain, for that matter. The man couldn't be steered unless it was his own willpower that led him.

It had demolished Hyungwon's bones to come back to Hogwarts after the summer break and find Minhyuk there, _again_ , more omnipresent than ever because they had had to share classes that time around.

As they sat there on the bleachers, Minhyuk chattering away, the white sun had climbed up.

The rest of the team started trailing out of the dorms and towards the pitch. Some of them still yawned, and Hyungwon suppressed his own yawn at the sight. Gain marched to them chirpy enough, her gloved hands full of what she'd managed to save from the breakfast menu. Minhyuk dug into the food instantly, but Hyungwon just put a few plums inside his pockets and mounted the broomstick.

He liked flying on an empty stomach. There was something clean about it – something cleansing. But during the second round of training, he usually chewed on his modest breakfast, spitting plum stones everywhere as he floated in front of the three tall hoops he was supposed to protect. He watched the game seemingly without care until the Quaffle moved to his half of the pitch.

When in the zone, nothing could stop him.

That was not to say some of his teammates' moves never surprised him when he least expected it. It had happened before that he had to spit out whatever he was munching on, his hands full of the Quaffle and his body hanging off the broomstick by the legs.

Luckily, Hyungwon had long legs. And he rarely missed a shot when riding his faithful Silver Arrow.

He could probably defend the hoops upside down _and_ blind.

The only one who scored against him during the whole training session was Minhyuk. He grinned so wide that the grimace was positively poster-worthy.

The cityscape lay frigid under a cluster of clouds and smoke when the team flew down and assembled around the coach. Blades of grass stood silvered with frost. Hyungwon went to pick up the plum stones from underneath the hoops after the pep talk was done. The team locked their Comets and Firebolts and Shooting Stars in the broomshed.

Dressed in their Quidditch gear, they set off to a nearby pub. It was situated in the Muggle part of the city. Without dragon hide gloves and broomsticks, they could easily pass for a bunch of football players. A very frozen bunch of football players.

The owner of the pub pulled a face when he realized he was about to serve a good dozen of teetotalers. He coaxed them into drinking coffee instead of Irish lager.

It was cold, and by tomorrow the caffeine would have been gone from their system, so the coach didn't even protest.

Hyungwon was polishing off his plate. He did so mechanically because he had to babysit Minhyuk and Jackson, who kept gawking at the TV with obvious distrust. Hyungwon sure hoped that they wouldn't say anything too suspicious in front of the poor Muggle man who ran the pub. It was never pleasant to wipe someone's memory because of one stupid slip.

“Alright, people,” said the coach. “Here's the final line-up. The Seeker: Gain. The Keeper: Hyungwon. You two are all set. You've been steadier than ever this past season. Beaters: Amber and Irene. I'm really pleased with you, girls. You didn't even let Jungkook get a look in. Chasers: Seulgi, Jackson, and Minhyuk. Your formation has been the strongest so far. Keep it up.” She turned to the designated substitute players with more pep talk.

Hyungwon was glad he didn't have to do it. He was too blunt to cheer people up.

He finished eating. The coffee he didn't order tasted good even though he couldn't sweeten it. It would go against the strict diet. So he just idly rubbed his complimentary sugar packet between two fingers, sensing the grains inside it grind under his thumb.

Taehyung smiled at him from the other side of the table. Being a backup didn't seem to faze him. Hyungwon smiled back.

The team kept feasting and talking. The coach was reprimanding Jungkook for his stage fright as the boy sat with his head hung low, obviously disappointed that he didn't make the team. Sighing, Hyungwon stirred the cooled down coffee dregs in his cup with a spoon. He put the spoon down. He got up and took a turn towards the restroom. Minhyuk was at his heels.

The toilets smelled clean, almost too clean with an acidic tang of disinfectants. A thin line of windows cut the wall under the ceiling like a milky strait, the glass too thick and opaque to let any light in.

Hyungwon walked up to a urinal. Minhyuk got comfortable right next to him.

They started to piss.

“So what's that thing in the corner?” asked Minhyuk nonchalantly.

“What thing in which corner? Rooms usually have four, you know.”

“Back there, inside the pub. The little box? Looks like a photograph, but bigger?” He grew impatient. “It can't be a huge photo, can it? It's framed like a regular painting, but – but not even paintings can take in so many people and places all at once.”

“Oh. You mean the TV.”

“The T – V?”

“Yep.”

“What's that?”

“It's... Okay, imagine you're about to develop magical film. Except you're not developing one picture at a time, or one scene at a time, but the whole thing. Imagine you can capture minutes and even hours of footage on that film.” Hyungwon would like to lecture Minhyuk a little more haughtily, but it was rather difficult to be haughty with his dick out. He just felt silly. “After you're done filming, you cut the footage and create a story. And people can watch these stories on TV.”

Minhyuk was silent for a while. He shook off everything that was supposed to be shaken off and pulled up his trousers.

“And _Muggles_ invented it?”

“You spent eight years in school and yet you never bothered to learn something useful about Muggle technology. I can't say I'm surprised.” They moved on to the sink. There was only one soap, so they fought for it before Hyungwon had to yield and wait. “There's a whole subject dedicated to it at Hogwarts, you know.”

“Yeah, and now _you_ imagine the face my parents would make if I told them I was out there, studying Muggle stuff. They'd be thrilled.”

“You would survive one or two Howlers, I'm sure.”

“How about one or two Cruciatus spells?”

Hyungwon stilled with his hands on the towel.

Suddenly, he didn't feel all that mighty lecturing Minhyuk, even with his cock safely tucked in.

 

_2002_

The timer in the interrogation chamber tick, tick, ticked away. Another sixty minutes passed by. If it wasn't for the ticking and the laws of physics, Hyungwon would have believed that they've been sitting here for an eternity and a half. Ventilation shafts let in airless air. It was just as musty as the air it pushed out.

Papers rustled.

“You used to be more talkative, Min,” said Kihyun, ordering files.

“I told you already. I'll start talking when you're gone.”

“You're in custody. This is hardly the time and place to try and lay down conditions as you please.”

“In that case I guess you'll never know what really happened.”

“Oh, but we know what happened,” said Kihyun, so quick to turn as sly as his former best friend that it chilled Hyungwon. “We have an eyewitness who claims that they saw you use the Unforgivable Curse during the Battle of Hogwarts. Are you going to play dumb?”

“No, I've heard of the Battle of Hogwarts,” replied Minhyuk. “Kinda been there, done that.”

The sarcasm impressed neither Hyungown, nor Kihyun.

“Very well. Been there, done that. I guess I can put down that you've confessed to your crime.”

“That's manipulation with words,” Hyungwon put in.

“Of course it is. That's why I took that tedious course on how to become an interrogator. To learn interrogation techniques,” deadpanned Kihyun.

“Look at you. Still fighting like during the good old times.” Minhyuk smiled. It wasn't a warm smile.

“Look at you. Still being a little shit even when you're facing life sentence in Azkaban,” said Kihyun, but he said it softly.

It seemed to soften Minhyuk, too. He leaned back in his seat, the heavy brocade of his robe shimmering as an outpour of light hit the silver threads. He folded his arms comfortably across his chest. The gesture made his sleeves ride up and show his sun-soaked wrists.

“I'll tell you everything. But I can't tell it to you, Ki.”

“Why? Are you ashamed of what you've done?”

“Let's say that I am.” He smiled again.

Minhyuk of the past never used to revel in silence like this one did. The silence was seeping, satisfied. It strangled everything and everyone. Nothing but the whirr of the ventilation shafts and the sound of the timer could disturb its depths. Minhyuk knew that he was untouchable for now.

There was very little to do besides take the bait.

“Alright,” said Hyungwon. He addressed Kihyun when he spoke next, calmed by his own decision. “Leave us, please. I'll lead the interrogation.”

Despite his worry lines, Kihyun still retained some of his cunning when he turned to Hyungwon with a searching gaze. _Don't you know us yet?_

Maybe Hyungwon was making a mistake.

But he had made too many already for this one to even count.

He grabbed the files which Kihyun pushed in front of him. He did so with his left hand. It took him a good while to leaf through the stack and find the right page.

Kihyun left. An intern walked in. He brought Hyungwon a cup of coffee. No caffeine, no sugar.

Minhyuk, the cherished prisoner, got a two course meal, a kettle of tea, and after he asked for it, a jug of milk.

“Good service,” remarked Minhyuk. He celebrated the statement with another mouthful.

“I suppose the coach will forgive you if you don't stick to your diet for a bit.”

Minhyuk shrugged. “The season's over, anyway.”

“So you're here to pass the time?” Hyungwon asked wryly.

“No, I'm here because a bunch of Aurors broke into my manor in the middle of my birthday party and dragged me here. You should've seen it. You'd enjoy that, I swear. One minute, the living room was full of people who call themselves my friends – and the next, you'd think I had some kind of contagious disease. They all scattered so fast that I couldn't even hand out desserts.” He swallowed, chuckling. “And now this. Isn't it a little too late for all these trials and witch-hunts?”

“I guess you get what you deserve.”

“What, do I deserve being pestered four years after the battle?”

“Justice has no time limit.” The papers finally stopped slipping from Hyungwon's fingers. He smoothed the page down. He looked up. “Did you participate in the Battle of Hogwarts?”

Minhyuk cut a piece of meat and put it in his mouth. He chewed, amused.

He ignored Hyungwon's question altogether.

Hyungwon ignored the cup of oily coffee standing by his useless hand.

“Did you participate in the Battle of Hogwarts?” he repeated.

“Can I finish eating first?”

“Yes. Why not. Eat your dinner.” Collected, Hyungwon got up. “We'll continue in the morning.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes. My shift's over.”

The timer ticked. Minhyuk glanced at it. It ticked louder.

“How long has it been over?”

“An hour or so.”

“Aw. Aren't you sweet, wasting your evening on me.”

“Not anymore. I'm not paid to work overtime and you're not cooperating even though you said you would. Maybe you'll change your mind after you've spent a night here. I hear the dungeon is no four star hotel.”

“Are you giving up that easy? I'm hurt.”

Hyungwon shrugged.

“But what about justice?” Minhyuk taunted him.

“As I said. It has no time limit.”

Jooheon stood guard by the door and turned when Hyungwon walked out. They exchanged a look. The two-second contact was enough for Jooheon to understand that the charade which they dared to call an investigation was leading nowhere. They'd both been through this before.

“Take him to the cell, please.”

“Alright. Take care, hyung.”

“You, too.”

Hyungwon wondered whether he should drop the case. The _Prophet_ was breathing down his neck, though. If he condemned another Slytherin, especially one who hadn't been convicted yet, it might be the last drop to break the dam.

Back in the office, Hyungwon packed his things and checked the latest of his mail. Nothing new.

His stomach grew tight. He thought of the two course meal, gravy and all, and two tan hands cutting the steak.

 

 

“How did it go yesterday?”

Hyungwon grunted as he continued putting out small fires. He wished he could put out Kihyun's little smirk as well.

“It didn't,” he said in the end.

“So you're going back down today?”

“I have to.”

“Will you need me?”

Yes. But he couldn't say that. And he had a feeling that Kihyun's presence would only make Minhyuk play mime again.

Why couldn't he be this quiet back at Hogwarts?

“No,” Hyungwon droned in the end. “I can handle it.”

“Well,” said Kihyun, “as you wish. Glad to see that Minhyuk's in... good hands.”

 


	3. III.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1998 - past.  
> 2002 - present.

_1998_

Spring. The sun was cold. A pale outpour of light pressed into the curtain, the sheer mesh painting patterns over the floor. The bedroom smelled of sleep and worn clothes. Empty bowls and plates stood scattered and stacked on the window sill. Insipid warmth pulsed through the tight space, turning the air barely breathable.

It was so humid that Hyungwon had sweated through his pyjamas.

That wasn't the reason he woke up before the alarm went off, though. He was roused by a sound.

A meaty, slapping sound.

He could hear the covers rustle on the top bunk. Creaking a little, the planks upholding the mattress drowned out the rustle and the slap – but only for a second or so. The noise got louder. The sheer physicality of it made Hyungwon shift.

His sudden movement didn't escape Minhyuk. There was a pause – again, a second or so – and then the rhythm was back. The bed groaned.

Hyungwon was livid.

The motherfucker was wanking off first thing in the morning again.

The first time it had happened, Hyungwon had been so startled that he had kicked upwards without thinking and managed to break one of the paper-thin planks. The only thing keeping him from kicking Minhyuk today was the vivid recollection of how it had gone the last time he'd tried.

“Can you like, not?” said Hyungwon tersely to cut off the smacking sound.

Minhyuk grunted.

He kept wanking off.

“Take it to the bathroom, man.” Hyungwon raised his voice.

“Too late,” Minhyuk groaned. His breath hitched in his throat, a little raspy. In the blackout that followed, he didn't heed Hyungwon at all.

Hyungwon didn't have the same luxury. He heard every little thing.

He gaped as Minhyuk fucking _came_.

It got quiet.

And quieter.

“Didn't take you very long,” he remarked.

Minhyuk laughed, breathy. “Fuck off. I've been tense.”

“Well, so have I, but you don't see me beating my meat in a _shared_ bedroom.”

“Try it sometimes. You might like the thrill.”

“I like sleeping better. Wake me up one more time and I will charm your dick off.”

“That just sounds like you're going to flirt furiously, Chae.”

“I meant it literally. I know spells that would make your Slytherin ass shrivel.”

“I bet.”

“No more wanking, wanker.”

“Geez. It's not like I did it on purpose. If you're so touchy, just get up and leave.”

That advice came late, unlike Minhyuk. Hyungwon decided to listen to it all the same. In a minute, he was out of the door.

 

_2002_

Taking proper pains, Hyungwon spread out all papers and protocols over the entire table so he wouldn't have to leaf through them throughout the session. When he was done, he looked up. The chair that stood across from him gave him an empty grin. He was still alone in the room. Breathing, watching shadows shift.

Air flowed from one ventilation shaft to the other, stale with mould.

Fourteen minutes crawled past. Jooheon brought the prisoner. Dimpled with concentration, he used magic to tie Minhyuk to the seat. The most the Slytherin could do was lean forward and place his hands on the table.

One night in the famed Ministry cell didn't seem to have taken a toll on Minhyuk. He radiated the sort of self-satisfied glow that any well-fed and thoroughly wanked off latecomer would radiate after sneaking into a packed classroom unnoticed. So, nothing new.

They began where they had left off yesterday.

 

_1998_

The gates flew open. The stadium, encircled by platforms and towers, burst with bright lights. Soon, spectator seats placed at high vantage points overflowed with people and flags and colourful confetti.

Crowds branched out, swarming up and down and left and right. Shades of blue and red merged on both sides of the stadium, the British side and the Norwegian alike. Everything moved and dripped. It all looked like a Joan Mitchell painting to Hyungwon, and he recalled the copy of her work which hung in his grandfather's office.

He could hear snippets of the national anthem as it came crackly from a sea of loudspeakers. He even heard the throng hum.

Everything buzzed and sizzled. Hyungwon could imagine the _tink tink tink_ of coins in bookmaker booths as people betted on their favourite team or their favourite player. Galleons fell and scattered on the ground and the atmosphere got thicker with the smell of gold – the smell of gamble.

 _Fourteen more minutes_ , reminded the voice of the official commentator. Her pleasant but heavy trill carried loudly above the pitch.

All the while, Hyungwon loitered in a walled off corridor which led from the locker room to the field. It was dark, and his vision got seared by lights and gold as he peered outside and into the stadium to check the attendance. He gazed from one end of the pitch to the other. Staircases were littered with men and women who rushed up to find their seats. They moved in strings, pulsing like veins. People waved. People loved it.

The sky, though. Hyungwon scowled as he looked up. The sky didn't love him today.

Above him, the opening of the stadium quivered milky and misted over due to how _hot_ the air was, how breathy, rising up from the impatient crowd. A condensed cloud sealed the oval piece of sky over and made it impossible the see the sun move. Hyungwon would actually have to pay attention to the commentator to check the time. He sighed.

Then he sensed someone's footsteps as they fell on the ground and reverberated right through him. The sprightly thud revealed who it was even sooner than the scent of cologne reached him. Hyungwon didn't glance back, but he pulled a face. He just knew.

The last thing he needed before the match was Minhyuk's chatter. Especially since he could still recall the slapping sound, which was even more grating to his ears and thoughts than whatever Minhyuk was about to say.

And Hyungwon remembered how bad it could be – the things Minhyuk would sometimes say. It was childish to even remember it. To cling to it. To be stuck in his seventh year at Hogwarts while Minhyuk, for the most part, had moved on and tried to be cordial. Polite, even.

But then again, Hyungwon might move on easier if he were in Minhyuk's place.

He tensed up when he felt Minhyuk stop right behind him. The older man stood on his toes to see over Hyungwon's shoulder properly, or to comfortably breathe down his neck to irritate him. Minhyuk took in the crowded platforms and towers. He whistled, but the sound was lifeless. He did it more to make Hyungwon flinch because his ear was so close to Minhyuk's mouth rather than to assess the tide of throngs filling the stadium.

“Well, fuck me,” commented Minhyuk. He sounded too worried to be casual or funny.

“I think the thing is packed to the last seat,” said Hyungwon.

“I feel sick.”

“Do you really?”

“A little. Do you know that feeling... like, you're nervous, but you're confident, but you're still nervous, and you kinda need to take a shit?”

Hyungwon rolled his eyes.

“There isn't enough time to take a shit,” he warned.

“No shit.”

For a moment, they stood there wordless. Minhyuk rested his broomstick against the wooden wall. The corridor reeked of sweaty uniforms and grass. In the end, Minhyuk shuffled away from Hyungwon, the gap between them gaping and ridiculous – so ridiculous, and so useless, since they finally stood on the same side of the field and not against each other like a Gryffindor and a Slytherin. Minhyuk should have kept away when they were kids, not now.

Tick. Tock.

“Are you scared?” Minhyuk piped up.

“Not really,” he lied. For Minhyuk's and his own sake. “I know I'm good.”

“Alright, Gryff. Alright. Keep that ego blown up. It might keep you afloat.”

“Lend me a flashlight, please? I think I can find the joke here somewhere if I look really hard.”

“What's a flashlight?” gaped Minhyuk.

Hyungwon gave up.

“Forget it.” He shot a glance sideways to see that Minhyuk was facing him, his back against the wall. “Good luck, I guess,” he added.

In the murk and commotion, Minhyuk lit up a little.

And he _fist bumped_ Hyungwon.

“Good luck, captain.”

 

_2002_

“Did you participate in the Battle of Hogwarts?”

Hyungwon wondered how come he could still lean back in his chair. With the way he kept repeating the sentence over and over, he should have been like those toys with a little key sticking out of their backs by now. You twist it, the toy speaks prettily. Did you participate – did you participate – did you participate.

“When was it again?” Minhyuk pretend-pondered. He sighed and tilted his head back and let his sinews sing. He looked like a classical Greek statue lighted from above, musing about the point of life. All that was missing was a toga. And the point.

“Spring 1998,” said Hyungwon. He didn't let Minhyuk's antics get to him.

“Of course. How could I forget?”

“Did you participate –”

“Yes, please.”

Hyungwon froze.

He put Minhyuk's answer down.

“What means of transportation did you use to arrive at the school grounds?”

“The same as Chae Hyungwon, please.”

 

_1998_

Sweat stung his eyes. It dripped off his eyelids. Turned salty on his lips. He could taste it when he licked the corner of his mouth, the skin there split from a light hit. His hands were wet to the bone inside the warm gloves. It was so _humid_. His exposed skin tingled with cold, but where it was covered either by the uniform or the goggles, he oozed sweat. Even his feet were sweaty, for fuck's sake, and he barely even moved them. Breaths left his hot mouth in trembling gusts.

So far, he had let two Quaffles shoot through the hoops. Two more hit the crossbar. The British team was still in the lead, though. The opposing Keeper had just lost the fourth ball.

The score was so low and the match had already gone on for so long that Hyungwon had turned more watchful than normally. He was in the zone. The audience seemed entertained as well because the Chasers made up for the lack of tallied goals by gradually more and more intricate moves which the people could watch and gasp at. The beaters sent each Bludger with increasing brutality. It went on and on.

The Quaffle moved into Hyungwon's scoring area. He dug his gloved fingers into the handle of his broomstick and hunched over to bring more speed to his movements. He deterred two attempts of the Norwegian Chaser before Minhyuk stole the Quaffle and darted with it towards the opposing set of hoops.

The commentator was alive.

“Lee has the Quaffle – he nutmegs Jakobson, who barely holds on to his broomstick – nice one – and now both remaining Puddlemere Chasers shield Lee from each side – coach Kim came up with this technique in 1991, but it seems that the Norwegian team hasn't caught up to her tricks yet –”

There was laughter.

The towers roared.

And then the world roared too.

A silver glow exploded all around, falling like crushed ice – what? Hyungwon stilled. Was it time for the fireworks already?

He looked up.

He _saw_ voices.

The oval opening of the stadium which had been closed off by clouds was now crusted over by a thousand of Patronuses calling for help.

 

_2002_

“Answer my questions clearly.”

“That's what I'm doing.”

“What means of transportation did you use to arrive at the school grounds?”

“The same as Chae Hyungwon,” said Minhyuk, unflinching.

Hyungwon wryly wrote it down with his left hand. It took some time.

“And how did Chae Hyungwon get to Hogwarts that day?” he asked, feeling silly. Protocols sucked.

“As quick as lightning.”

They looked at each other.

Minhyuk smiled a little.

 

_1998_

He recognized Hyunwoo's Patronus first. The bear melted and reshaped itself in the ocean of silvery light above, its movements wispy as it flowed lower and lower. It shone so bright that Hyungwon stared. In a way, the bear spotted Hyungwon before he spotted it.

“ _Hogwarts – the battle – I won't get there in time – can't fly from Hungary –_ ”

Hoseok's bunny dashed past, so small that Hyungwon barely saw it as it minced the way for a roaring shark.

They all said the same thing.

The school.

It was burning.

Hyungwon didn't lose time sending the Order of the Phoenix his answer. It was answer enough when he aimed the handle of the broomstick upwards and shot through the jellyfish-like mass of silver above. The Patronuses parted like towering mountains when Hyungwon broke through them. The sky was black.

Quickly, so the stadium lights wouldn't blind him, he glanced back.

His team was behind him. Even the bench players were stumbling to their feet and grabbing their broomsticks. Some of the Norwegian players stared at what was going on until they darted up too. They didn't need to understand what the Patronuses were saying. War was a common language.

Gain zoomed by. She had a daughter at Hogwarts. Amber was at Hyungwon's side not long after. Her girlfriend taught Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Hyungwon had no one there. Not anymore.

Only himself, he supposed. His own past self. There used to be times when he had been at his most peaceful at Hogwarts. There used to be times when he still had been himself.

He looked over his shoulder.

Minhyuk flew not too far behind, a majestic bird of prey spreading its pearly wings above him. He held the Quaffle under his arm, probably to prevent the Norwegian team from scoring in his absence.

Hyungwon had no idea whom the Patronus soaring next to Minhyuk belonged to. He didn't hear what the bird had said.

He didn't know which side Minhyuk was going to fight for.

 

_2002_

“As quick as lightning,” said Hyungwon, unamused.

“Yep.”

“How quick is that, precisely?”

“As quick as you on that old ass Silver Arrow.”

“I will just write down that you arrived at the school grounds on a broomstick,” he grudged, tired.

“That's a lie, though. I didn't make it that far.” Minhyuk leaned back. He studied Hyungwon. “Is it true, then? Do you really not remember anything?”

Hyungwon ignored the question.

“What happened on the way?” he asked instead.

“A curse got me. I almost fell into the Great Lake. I had to run the rest of the way to the castle.”

“Did someone from the Order cast the spell because they thought you were a threat?”

All the question got him from Minhyuk was another vague smile.

 

_1998_

Leaving the stadium was one thing. To actually get to Hogwarts was a whole nother thing.

Hyungwon's ears only stopped ringing when they got to Aviemore, flying like a flock of black birds over mountain ridges and forested peaks. The fever that had permeated him upon seeing the Patronuses left him; betrayed him. Instead of adrenaline, plain old fear settled into his bones. There was no heroic rush of blood that would spur him on. Only worry.

He was afraid. Afraid that they were so close already, but not close enough. Afraid that they wouldn't arrive in time. Afraid they weren't fit to fight. Afraid that there was so few of them.

That they weren't enough.

And perhaps they truly weren't.

The final headcount was good – it was more than Hyungwon would expect in a situation like this – but still, it wasn't _enough_. And one of them quite possibly planned to join the enemy side.

Nothing but the swish of wind in their ears, they dashed through the darkness. Nobody talked. The dark was so complete that Hyungwon kept losing track of where they were. Sometimes, lights would emerge underneath them like a handful of spilled golden stars. It had been almost an hour since the last city, though. Aviemore stood hidden amongst mountains, shrouded in their shadow.

The team had to fly higher because of the terrain. The air was thinner. Milky with cold. Hyungwon could barely see Gain, who surged ahead of him within arm's reach. He went on anyway.

He could still hear Hyunwoo's voice. It had come out gentle out of the bear's muzzle – gentle but dark – the way it would beckon to the Gryffindor team before school matches.

For the first time, Hyungwon realized that there might have been his mother's corsac somewhere amongst the Patronuses. She could have been searching for him to say goodbye, or to call him back home, or to make sure that the last thing he heard wasn't screaming.

He wanted to look back. But if he did, he would waver.

Not knowing how, Hyungwon sped up and took the lead. He pushed the tangibly chilly air in front of him, crushing it like floods crush cities.

In the distance, the towers of the Hogwarts castle burned into the night.

 

_2002_

He let Minhyuk work him like a chunk of dough.

Hyungwon had somehow begun to play the game according to Minhyuk's rules. What was more, he was also beginning to realize he was doing it. It didn't make him feel very bright to figure it out.

Some Slytherins were born smart and some became smart along the way; and Minhyuk outsmarted them all. The man had known from the start that the interrogation was going to be nothing but a play designed for one performer. They sat here, bickering, _reminiscing_ rather than talking, and Hyungwon felt like a fucking backdrop in Minhyuk's little theatre. Not even. He was the audience.

He never expected Minhyuk to give his answers freely. Hyungwon knew him all too well to be that naive. But he had still underestimated him.

His smile slowly becoming a serious, set line, Minhyuk interrogated _him_. Said words that made Hyungwon rephrase his questions. Said stuff that made him remember.

 

_1998_

The heat of the fire welcomed them.

The highest points of the castle quivered in flames. Towers were coming down one by one. It was as thought Hyungwon's own childhood was crumbling.

Children were dying.

Glass sizzled and rained down.

The scorch, the smoulder, the pandemonium of voices. All of it combined attacked Hyungwon with the rage of a storm. Suddenly, it didn't relieve him to be finally there.

Blue as a vein, a beam of light ate away at the dark. A dark, hooded figure had cast the spell. It was the first curse thrown their way. It barely missed Hyungwon. He made a mistake and looked over his shoulder. He saw Minhyuk fall off his broomstick. After that, Hyungwon only looked ahead.

 

_2002_

_The defendant admits his involvement in the Battle of Hogwarts._

_The defendant states that his means of transportation was a broomstick._

Hyungwon tapped the report with the tip of the quill.

 

_1998_

The gate to the castle courtyard was missing one wing. Hyungwon flew inside. The fountain that used to stand in the middle of the area was nowhere to be seen. In its stead lay a heap of stones. There was rubble everywhere. Bits and pieces of walls and columns littered the courtyard in a thick, dust-like layer.

Nothing could prepare him to see Hogwarts in ruins.

Had they really wasted so much time getting here?

Had the battle really been going on for so long already?

There was a crack. He glanced up. A gargantuous hand rammed through the belly of another tower and sent it crashing down. The giant who it belonged to roared.

Hyungwon had to halt to avoid the tumbling bricks. The broomstick shot up and turned backwards. Hyungwon ended up flying upside down, watching the world burn. He saw a falling body and for a second he tried to lie to himself and believe that he might be able to catch the child, but he was too far. Before he even regained his balance, the piercing shriek died down.

The sight sent bile rising up his throat.

So he became blind. And deaf. And forced his way forward.

He didn't know where to fly first. The castle was eerily empty when he finally got inside. People fought everywhere, but in small groups which were too far apart for him to do anything, too scattered, and Hyungwon let out a heartfelt “ _Fuck_.” It was an impossible task to assess who needed his help the most.

As he stared around, the tip of his Silver Arrow hit something, and the stumble sent Hyungwon rolling. The broomstick broke. He tried to get up. His legs had gone numb during the flight. He had ice instead of blood.

Everything and everyone was so far away.

He crouched and pulled his wand out of his leg pad.

It gave him strength just to touch the wooden hilt. Light spread through him. His feet heavy, he started running. He spotted a couple of students deterring a Death Eater.

He raised his hand.

 

_2002_

“What prompted you to participate in the battle?”

“I was bored.”

Hyungwon pulled out his pocket quill kit. It was a pretentious gift from Kihyun, but it served Hyungwon well when he wanted to distract himself or ignore people on purpose. He opened the box and carefully, slowly took out a small knife. He trimmed the tip of the quill which he had been using. It had crusted over with dried up ink.

No wonder. They'd been here since breakfast.

“What prompted you to participate in the battle?” said Hyungwon again without looking up.

“I reckoned it could make me famous. Everybody loves a war hero.”

“What prompted you to participate in the battle.”

“I got this nostalgic feeling, you know. I wanted to see the castle for one last time.”

“What prompted you –”

“Chae Hyungwon went too.”

Chae Hyungwon this, Chae Hyungwon that. The real Chae Hyungwon suddenly didn't feel like Chae Hyungwon at all. He began to clean the nails of his crippled hand with the freshly trimmed quill.

“So what?” he droned. “You went because I went?”

“I had to make sure your Gryffindor ass wasn't going to do anything stupid just because you saw your school crush's Patronus.”

“Hyunwoo wasn't at Hogwarts, though. He wasn't even in Britain at the time.”

“How was I supposed to know that? I couldn't even hear my own thoughts, much less what that silly bear told you.”

“Funny. I thought you flew to Hogwarts because of that condor.”

Their eyes locked.

“That's a part of it,” said Minhyuk.

“Whose Patronus was it?”

“My dad's.”

 


	4. IV.

_1998_

He was sweating bullets. Droplets ran down his skin and stung like acid, especially on the torn, tender bit of skin between his index and middle finger. His left eyebrow was burned off. His body felt fluid and parched at the same time as he walked on. He fell apart as he crashed back together. He had to go on. Had to.

Hyungwon wasn't quite sure where he was. He had been mounting the moving stairs for what could have been minutes – but also hours. It didn't help that the staircase kept floating back and forth, and he, lost in its maze, floated with it.

There was no way of recognizing his surroundings. The path seemed strange to him. The corridors which he had passed so far looked like castle corridors, but not Hogwarts corridors. Destruction had made the place unreal. Each hallway looked exactly the same now that it was vacant and full of glass and stone. Talking pictures lay empty and abandoned on the floor, some of them upturned or torn from frames. Enchanted coats of armour marched to fight the Death Eaters, the bronze crumbling to pieces with each step. Holes in carpets sizzled, blackened at the rim.

There was no one to talk to. Not a sign to hang on to as he carried on, searching for students.

Or enemies.

Hyungwon heeded none of that. He walked. And walked. His ears pricked up, he went wherever he heard a scream or a curse.

The worst part of the battle was happening outside, though Hyungwon didn't know that. Claustrophobic crowds had came crashing over the castle grounds like a terrified wave, battling amongst fallen towers and rubble. Children and Death Eaters alike had scattered around the Forbidden Forest to find solace as far from the collapsing castle as possible. Those who had been too wounded to fight carried the dead back inside the Great Hall to save them from being disgraced and further mutilated.

Hyungwon had been amongst them for a bit before setting out upstairs. He had guts enough to fight, but none to handle the dead. There had been kids no older than fourteen in the row of ash-pale bodies. He had had no time to drag them inside, much less to defend the living. Some of the kids were dead because they had run slower than Hyungwon and some because they had run faster than him.

It would not end. He had to swallow his wrath again and again when he recalled the children's faces. Flickering lights had made them appear alive and utterly lifeless all at once.

He wanted to help. He wanted to help.

And all he did was witness it all fall.

Everything went blurry. The corridors, the faces. He remembered talking to Hoseok a few moments back – where, though? By the statue of Helga Hufflepuff? Had they even talked, or had they simply passed each other with a nod and solemn silence?

He had no idea.

When Hyungwon fought, whether it was on the field or on the battlefield, he put his whole being into it. He stopped being Chae Hyungwon and became a winner; or someone who would do anything to win. It put him in limbo. Waking up and becoming himself again was all the worse afterwards. He was lost, so lost.

A noise reached him. It was coming from behind the nearest corner. Footsteps. Quick rather than heavy. They had a sprightly thud to them. Hyungwon knew that walk.

Nevertheless, he outstretched his arm, gripping the wand.

Minhyuk noticed him the second they stepped into each other's field of vision. He wore no mask. Because of that bareness, Hyungwon felt the full force of Minhyuk's stare; felt taken in by it. The connection didn't last longer than several seconds – possibly shorter. Rooted to the spot, Hyungwon didn't utter a sound even as Minhyuk kept walking, walking away from him, walking forward instead of turning the corner and heading towards him.

Minhyuk's robes rustled and he disappeared. All that lingered was the sound of his footsteps and his gaze.

It was as if he was checking on Hyungwon before he went on to carry out whatever it was he had to carry out.

In a flash, Hyungwon saw the wings of a condor, the wisps of silver light opening and closing behind Minhyuk's back as he flew.

Hyungwon turned around.

His legs led him.

 

_2002_

“I see. So you actually decided to join the battle because your father had ordered you to do it.”

“I never said that. He could've been warning me not to fly to Hogwarts. You know, like a good, loving papa.”

“What did your father's Patronus tell you?”

“That's private.”

“You are obstructing the investigation.”

“How so?” Minhyuk tipped his head to the side. “You asked about my motive. I told you my motive.”

“Am I supposed to believe you were following _me_ instead of your father?”

His Death Eater father.

“What's so strange about it? I had already followed you back to Hogwarts once,” said Minhyuk, boring into him, “before the battle.”

Hyungwon paused at that. He couldn't mean his eight year at Hogwarts, could he?

“Excuse me?”

“I followed you to Puddlemere United,” Minhyuk continued.

Hyungwon sensed the flesh in his face tense up and harden around the mouth. It was cold in the investigation chamber, and he was cold too. All over.

Heavily, Hyungwon spoke up.

“Why did you follow me the day of the battle?”

“Because you were my captain.”

Were.

Minhyuk smiled like a schoolboy. He still knew where it hurt.

“Why?” Hyungwon pressed.

“Dunno. Call it Slytherin loyalty.”

 

_1998_

He ascended the stairs, climbing higher and higher; and he would have gone on, up towards the demolished towers, if a curse hadn't broken the floating staircase under him into a million pieces. A crash deafened him.

Hyungwon didn't fall for long. Another set of stairs was moving right under him and he came down hard. He hit his back on the sharp edge of the lowest stair.

He got lucky. But his luck didn't last. Groaning, he felt himself slip.

The world was afloat and in motion. Hyungwon's own weight was pulling him down. All of a sudden, he was heavier than ever, bigger, a clumsy flank of meat trying to crawl back up the levitating stairs. His lower back smarted so bad that he believed he would never sit down properly.

His grip gave out.

He slid lower. Slid off.

Panicking, Hyungwon threw his elbow over the last step. He managed to hold on. He threw a quick glance down. Fuck. He hung on for dear life.

And then, ever so slowly, the staircase reached its island and sank into it. With a sickening crack, it crushed his arm.

Hyungwon screamed.

He didn't remember the fall.

 

_2002_

“Whose side did you join during the battle?”

“Who else's than my captain's side?”

Unrushed, Minhyuk experimentally pulled at the magical shackles which pulsed glittery around his body. Seeing that he had enough room to stretch a little, he did so. He cracked the fingers on his left hand. He cracked the fingers on his right hand.

Hyungwon decided to play Minhyuk's game again. It was all just rhetorics. Semantics.

“Whose side did your captain fight for?” Hyungwon asked in a monotonous voice.

“Beats me.” Minhyuk folded his hands on the table.

Hyungwon didn't remember the fall. He just remembered waking up _minced_ from the shoulder down.

“What are you implying?” said Hyungwon. His eyes went watery from how hard he was looking at the man in front of him.

“Oh. Nothing.” Giving a shrug, Minhyuk worked him like a chunk of melted metal to be moulded. “You can't trust a Slytherin, anyway, can you?”

 

_1998_

Instead of spit, his mouth dripped with blood.

He didn't remember the fall. He just remembered waking up to someone rushing to pry his fingers open. It was his right hand; his wand-wielding hand. It was as good as liquid. The stranger's hands clasped clammy onto his, their sweat mingling and sticky. Hyungwon's fist twitched. Not even he could open it now had he tried. He was a bonfire lighted up with agony.

He opened his eyes.

Grey colour blinded him. The world had gone ashen.

Hyungwon couldn't see that the little person who kept trying to wrangle his wand away from him wasn't any taller than a second year. It was too bright for that, and he was in too much pain. Grunting, he rolled onto his side. The child gasped with a start. Hyungwon went after the sound – on instinct, like when he followed the Quaffle on the field.

They started to wrestle.

 _Both_ Hyungwon's arms throbbed.

Slick with blood, the wand slipped from his grasp, but the kid couldn't get hold of it, either.

Hyungwon saw white. He was breathing heavily – or it was the child whom he thought was an enemy. Splitting sensation ran through his nerves, pushing him, urging.

He lay on top of the other person and finally snatched the wand.

 _No, no, they're coming_. Was it what the person was saying?

Except nobody was coming. They were already there.

 

_2002_

“Hyungwon?”

He wasn't sure why he sat there silent.

And then.

“Whose side did you join during the battle?”

“Yours. And you fought for the Order of the Phoenix,” said Minhyuk quietly.

Did I?

Hyungwon winced.

 

_1998_

The child was the first to fall.

Down on his stomach and with his wand-wielding hand pulverized, Hyungwon didn't fare much better.

He fended off three Death Eaters, but his spells lacked strength. Two of the figures garbed in heavy black robes were slowly regaining consciousness. The third one lay still stupefied.

Desperate, Hyungwon crawled behind the small, dead body.

That was when he noticed it was only a boy.

 

_2002_

Laboriously, with his left hand, Hyungwon jotted down Minhyuk's answer.

His temples and armpits had grown damp.

He wasn't scared of what Minhyuk might say next. He was scared of the thread of memories that had started to untangle in his mind on itself, without Minhyuk's help.

 

_1998_

Laboriously, with his left hand, Hyungwon warded off curses from behind his human shield.

The child was still warm.

Hyungwon didn't see grey or white anymore. He saw everything all too clearly. But that was the only clear thing about the whole situation. What was on the outside. His own body felt fuzzy.

His willpower wavered with every ill-aimed spell. Pointing the tip of his wand everywhere where something rustled or moved, he sent out rays of pure white light. The colour soon changed to dizzying green. He didn't know which way to turn. He was lost.

He didn't care whether he would harm or kill anymore. The spells he cast were becoming worse and worse; the Death Eaters were closer and closer.

If someone had come to him before the match and said that in several hours, he would be yelling out the killing curse, Hyungwon would have told them to go visit a professional at St Mungo's.

But oh, he did. He sent the curse with a shriek.

The Death Eater roared it first.

Hyungwon wasn't ready to die. Not now; not when he'd already sacrificed his conscience and resorted to the vilest of the Unforgivable Curses.

Why the fuck had he done it all. Why the fuck had he tried to hang on.

Why the fuck was he about to die – now that he was ready to kill just to survive.

He heard a call.

The Death Eater came down like he wasn't more than rolling smoke; mighty but quiet. Behind the fallen body stood Minhyuk. Hyungwon could believe right then and there that he was the shadow of death.

Minhyuk stepped over the body.

Both bodies.

“Get up. Get up, come on,” murmured Minhyuk, gesturing to Hyungwon to hurry up.

He couldn't move. He threw an accusing glance at Minhyuk as if it was his fault that Hyungwon's body refused to cooperate. Then he threw another glance at the dead boy.

He was dressed in green.

“I can't get up,” said Hyungwon, hoarse from shouting.

“Why not? Are your legs fucked up, too?”

Were they? “I don't think so.”

Minhyuk kneeled beside him. He grabbed Hyungwon around the waist to drag him up.

“ _Fuck_!”

“Sorry – but _shit_ , get _up_ , Won. There's more of them. We have to peace the fuck out.”

As Minhyuk hauled him up, Hyungwon realized just how watery he felt. He wasn't more than a rag doll. Even his legs wobbled, bruised from the fall.

He gripped Minhyuk's shoulder with his good hand. His fingers twitched.

“How did you even get here?” Hyungwon snapped at him, without breath.

What took you so long?

“I saw you fall.”

 

_2002_

He finished writing.

 

_1998_

“Couldn't have you get here sooner?”

“How?” Minhyuk gestured towards the ruins all around them; the broken skeleton of the staircase which had come crashing down along with Hyungwon what felt like hours ago. Above them, stray stones and bricks still traveled in the air, bumping into each other and sending dust down into their eyes. But the floating debris wasn't firm enough to carry anyone.

Not waiting for an answer, Minhyuk prompted Hyungwon to start walking. He did so bodily this time.

Hyungwon stopped him.

“The kid.”

“You can't help him.”

“I can't let him lie here, either. We have to carry him downstairs to the rest of the dead.”

“Look, I'm not being funny, but he's already amongst the dead. Whether he's here or downstairs isn't gonna change anything for him. I'm sure someone will bring him down when the battle is over.”

“But they – the Death Eaters could... desecrate the body,” said Hyungwon.

“It's just a body now. It won't hurt him.”

Hyungwon shook Minhyuk off. It was a dire task.

Pulling the boy's body towards the wall was even harder. Still, Hyungwon had to do it. He couldn't leave the small Slytherin boy there defenseless in the middle of the corridor. The least he could do was offer him some dignity in death.

(He didn't have to die at all.)

Hyungwon stepped away from the child. He felt like one of his murderers.

As he was backing away, he stumbled over the Death Eater. He looked down. Nothing happened for a second.

Hyungwon kicked the man's mask off.

Finally, a familiar face.

He glanced up at Minhyuk.

“Yoongi won't thank for this,” he said tonelessly.

Minhyuk wasn't watching Yoongi's brother's corpse, though.

He was watching Hyungwon.

He knew that Hyungwon was going to faint again before the taller man realized it himself.

 

_2002_

“So you fought for the Order.”

“Yes, please.”

“During the whole battle?”

“Yessir.”

“You never switched sides once?”

“No. Not good at switching.”

Hyungwon glossed over the jeer.

“But this file right here,” he said, waving the paper, “says that there were your friends and family members amongst the dead and incarcerated Death Eaters. Are you trying to tell me you were fighting against them? From the very beginning?”

“Did you see me wearing You-Know-Who's mask at any point of the battle?” asked Minhyuk. Nimbly, as if not even paying attention to the gesture, he unfastened the buttons of his sleeves. He pushed the sleeves up a notch. “Do you see his Death Mark anywhere?”

Minhyuk's skin was unmarked save for a couple of scars. Sun-dipped. The inner part of his wrist was almost as tan as the rest of his hand.

Scrambling with the papers, Hyungwon asked:

“Whose side did your father fight for?”

“You-Know-Who's.”

“And you didn't.”

“You know full fucking well I didn't.”

“The only thing I know for sure is that you killed someone that night.”

“And you didn't?” Minhyuk snorted.

“I cast the Unforgivable Curse on a Death Eater, yes,” admitted Hyungwon. He wasn't going to excuse that. It was the truth. He had sent the spell Yoongi's brother's way that day. Except Minhyuk had been faster. “I was in the right.”

“So was I.” Eyes narrowing, Minhyuk idly stroked the exposed, tattooless skin of his forearm. “I did the very same thing that you had planned to do. But I'm sitting here and you're sitting there. It's interesting, isn't it. When a Gryffindor kills a Death Eater, he's celebrated for it. He's a hero. But when a Slytherin does it, he's just a killer.”

“So that's it? You're innocent because you only killed one of yours?”

Minhyuk's features hardened.

“And you didn't?”

 

_1998_

The sun went up.

Hyungwon wasn't awake to see it.

 

_2002_

“Sorry. I'm so sorry, Won, that – that was fucked up.”

“Not at all,” said Hyungwon. For some reason, he felt lighter.

“No, I _am_ sorry. You didn't kill the kid.”

“Didn't I, though?”

“No. Fuck, no. Even if he had your wand, what were the odds of him surviving? You were older – and a skilled fighter. You needed that wand. What could _he_ do with it that you couldn't?”

“Run.”

Minhyuk didn't even stop to snort.

“He didn't have to disarm you for that.”

“Well, it wasn't his fault that he tried. For all he knew, I was just a dead body in his way. He couldn't have known I was alive – that I would need a weapon to defend myself.” Hyungwon paused. Then, fainter, he repeated. “I was just a dead body for him.”

“I guess that makes you even, then.”

Someone knocked on the door. Jooheon looked inside the room and jangled the keys.

“Lunch break,” he announced. There was a slight hint of sullenness to his tone, as if he detested being in the same room with the accused Slytherin and found his presence tainting. “The prisoner can have visitors today. If there are any,” Jooheon added darkly.

“Did Hyunwoo come?” inquired Minhyuk, the question aimed at Jooheon although his eyes remained fixed on Hyungwon.

“Do I look like a doorman to you?” Jooheon queried back.

“You _are_ , technically, tending the door right now,” replied Minhyuk, unperturbed.

Hyungwon got up. The sudden movement put a stop on the duel of words between the two men. The dead arm at Hyungwon's side seemed heavier to him today.

He spoke up.

“Jooheon, take the prisoner away, please.”

With a nod, Jooheon walked in. Hoseok, who had been hidden behind the half-closed door, followed after him. They held Minhyuk from each side as they marched him outside.

Hyungwon had lost his appetite, but he took the elevator to the Atrium anyway and ambled towards the dining hall. As always, the room sparkled with voices. It was alight with life. He was glad to disappear in the crowd.

Except he didn't really disappear.

As soon as he sat down with his food, Kihyun ambushed him.

“So?” Kihyun prompted when Hyungwon returned to his lunch, not minding the interruption.

“So what?”

“How is it going?” asked Kihyun in his calmest voice.

“It's going.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He said some things.”

Kihyun made a displeased sound. Unwittingly, he touched Hyungwon's tea cup with the back of his hand, making sure it was warm.

“Do you need me to go with you tomorrow?” he asked.

“No.” They weren't talking about things Minhyuk would want to discuss in front of his former best friend.

Neither would Hyungwon, for that matter.

“Alright,” said Kihyun slowly. He reached forward and rearranged the plates on Hyungwon's tray. The jittery fucker. “Do you need anything else, though? Help with the paperwork? Should I file a request for Veritaserum so you can verify Minhyuk's testimony?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Are you _sure_?”

Hyungwon didn't look up.

He didn't dare.

He swallowed a mouthful.

“I'm sure. So far, I can back up everything he's said.”

 


	5. V.

_2002_

With an awkward squint, Hyunwoo put one mighty arm between the bars of Minhyuk's cell. The fabric of his robes rustled, flakes of rust transferring into the folds of the sleeve. Hyunwoo patted Minhyuk's chest and shoulders. It was his thing. He always had to make physically sure that everyone was okay. As if an outer touch could asses that.

Hyunwoo suppressed a worried sigh.

“How much longer?”

“Not sure,” replied Minhyuk. He took a step closer towards the bars so Hyunwoo wouldn't have to push too hard to reach him. The captain could barely squeeze his bicep in. “Might take a while.”

“I brought you some clothes.”

“Is that allowed?”

“It should be.”

Minhyuk turned to Hyunwoo's escort, two Aurors almost as bulky as Hyunwoo himself. One of them gave a curt nod.

“Thanks,” said Minhyuk in their direction, not at all thankful. Turning back to Hyunwoo, he brushed an invisible speck of dust off his own shoulder. “Thank you, hyung. I was beginning to look a bit rough.”

“Well.” Hyunwoo lowered his voice. “What are you still doing here, anyway? You said that this would be a quick process.”

“I thought so too.”

Hyunwoo blinked. He pushed the tiniest bit forward still, chest pressing against iron. Both were equally unyielding. Hyunwoo grimaced.

“Minhyuk, what's going on? Are they trying to frame you?”

“No.”

“Then what is this all about? You told me you were innocent.”

“I am.”

“In that case you should have been out by now,” his sombre captain pointed out. “One drop of Veritaserum and they'll have to believe everything you say, no matter how biased they are. I understand that you and Hyungwon have a history, but he's not unkind. Never been. He'll trust you once you give him actual evidence. File a request and –”

“I'd rather have Hyungwon believe me than think that I'm somehow trying to weasel my way out with that potion.”

“But that's the point. He'll believe you. He'll have to. Veritaserum doesn't let you lie.”

“I shouldn't need Veritaserum once Won remembers what happened that day.”

Hesitating, Hyunwoo turned his head as though to check on the escort, but changed his mind halfway through. The flesh in his cheeks rippled.

“ _Once he remembers_?” Hyunwoo whispered.

“Yeah. Yeah, I – I was wrong. I thought he...” Trailing off, Minhyuk swallowed on an empty mouth. “Look, I've never thought he was joining the witch hunt. That's not like him. I just... I just thought that he might be trying to make it tough for me. Make me squirm. But he really must've forgotten, hyung.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I don't know why it happened or when exactly – because when I last saw him, his memory was alright. I don't even know if any sort of magic was involved, or if it was just the fall. But he _doesn't remember_. He's not trying to frame me. He's not.. he's not.”

Slytherins prized purity, but pure weakness was a feeling Minhyuk would gladly forego.

Naturally, weakness never felt good to him unless he was able to exaggerate it, fake it, almost, and use it to gain something. One more day to finish a particularly tedious Charms essay. A free butterbeer during those times he had still depended on his father's allowance. Personal flying lessons with the team captain.

Minhyuk had a resourceful streak that allowed him to capitalize on about just anything, including his losses. Allowed him to use them as weapons.

He had a way of taking his emotions, plucking them from his heart like weeds from very soft soil, and _unfeeling_ them. Reshaping them. Squashing them into something small and hard-beating inside the palm of his hand. He could take his frustration and turn it into ambition. He could take sadness and morph it into arrogance. He could take hopelessness and exploit it to inspire vicious protectiveness in others, even in people who normally didn't get along with Slytherins. He didn't always do it consciously – this emotional shape-shifting. But when he did, he was sure to glean something out of it.

But he was gaining nothing now.

He never did, where Hyungwon was concerned.

All Minhyuk was left with was the same old feeling that he had fucked up again.

He braved a smile for Hyunwoo's sake.

“Don't worry, hyung. I don't mind staying here for a little longer. What does it matter if I'm here for one day, or one week? The damage's done. Everyone knows about the charges.”

“Just because the damage has been done, it doesn't mean you should willingly cause more,” said Hyunwoo.

“I'm not. I'm trying to fix this mess. The longer the investigation lasts, the better for me. When they let me out, it will look credible, and not like I'm buying my way out or that the Ministry is favouring me because I represent the nation.” He grabbed Hyunwoo's shoulder through the bars and returned his captain's signature squeeze. “And the longer I stay, the more Hyungwon remembers. Isn't that a good thing?”

Hyunwoo gave him a look as though he wondered about that.

 

 

Undressing, Hyungwon smoothened the creases of his robes and washed the clothes with a flick of the wand. He looked around the flat.

Friday, he thought dismally. His head, fridge, and schedule were all equally empty. At the end of every week, he still somehow managed to stay surprised that he had two free days ahead of him; two whole days void of any human contact. Void of anything, really.

One would think that after ages and ages wasted in the interrogation chamber, Hyungwon held the championship in killing time. An hour spent there lasted half a lifetime.

But how many lifetimes would Hyungwon have to kill until Monday, when he had nothing to do in the meantime and no one to interrogate except for himself?

Hyungwon settled down by the window, watching as Diagon Alley quaintly bustled with shoppers and lights. The flat grew stiller in contrast with what lay underneath. For a brief minute, Hyungwon missed Kihyun. Missed him utterly. He recalled the year after the battle, the two of them rooming together right here in this cramped place which was already too small to harbour just one.

It had been a strange time back then right after the battle, a strange time bringing even stranger couples and groups together, and Hyungwon sometimes wondered whether all of it had really happened. Whether Kihyun had truly lived here to take care of Hyungwon's wounds and short-term memory loss. But he had, and the plants and lovely cups and rugs he had left behind could testify for that.

Four years had passed. Four years, and how far Kihyun had moved on while Hyungwon still rotted here.

He had just been learning to live without his wand-wielding arm back then, and Kihyun out of all people had been there to help, seeing that the rest of their old Hogwarts squad had scattered again – scattered abroad, in most cases. To heal. To hide. Only Hyungwon and Kihyun had remained put in England and faced the sudden emptiness which the victory had brought about.

Hyungwon didn't have anyone to mourn, so staying hadn't hurt. Kihyun had his own vacancy to fill, as he had lost his entire family to the war. Half of them had turned up dead, half imprisoned. Granted, they had all been dead to Kihyun even prior to the wizarding war, as he had chosen Hoseok and the Order over Voldemort's inner circle. But Hyungwon knew all about seeing dead bodies and realizing that death wasn't a metaphor.

And then Hoseok had enlisted in the newest Auror training programme, leaving Kihyun behind for a whole year. Breaking things off for the time being because it was kinder. Hoseok had always been kind.

Hyungwon tapped at the window pane. It was crystal-cold.

When he was alone like this, he thought of Kihyun and of them eating by this very window, and bantering about things that Hyungwon had misplaced because of his bad memory, and about them fucking. Fucking to fill something bottomless, and failing at it.

He missed the sex sometimes. And sometimes he didn't.

Kihyun was good. Too good. Too methodical. He'd given Hyungwon some of his best orgasms, but what did it matter when it all had been so clinical. Kihyun would never think of him and he would never think of Kihyun; and then they would come face to face, hard, and Kihyun would wipe the cum, and they would be awkward around each other at work and fuck even better back at home – and press repeat.

They had known that none of it would ever be enough.

They'd tried, of course. But trying and succeeding were two different things.

It was telling that after all this time, what Hyungwon missed the most was Kihyun's cooking. The tiny guy was a perfectionist, and while Hyungwon preferred things to be quick and sloppy in bed, he rather enjoyed coming home to a warm meal.

His stomach constricted at the recollection. He glanced at the fireplace and tried to consider just how shocked Kihyun would be if Hyungwon stuck his head right into his and Hoseok's dining room and demanded to be fed.

Just that thought alone provided him enough nourishment to stay planted in his seat, a wanly amused expression quirking up the corners of his mouth. No, he would not visit Kihyun.

He could visit his parents, though.

For a moment, he made no move. He had no owl to send to let them know he'd drop by tomorrow. He used to have a sickly barn owl, but it had died shortly after he had moved in here. (“Of loneliness,” Kihyun had quipped.)

Grasping for his wand, Hyungwon thought of joining the Gryffindor Quidditch team as he conjured a perfect Patronus. Growing in size and turning denser, the turtle glided through the air, glimmering silver. Hyungwon spoke to it.

“Tell my mom...”

 

 

He Apparated right into the garden.

His parents lived in a secluded suburban area that any outsider would call quiet. Populated solely by half-blood residents and mixed families, the place could perhaps be labeled as _peaceful._ Quiet, though, wouldn't make it on top of Hyungwon's list if he had to describe the suburbs. There was too much magic involved for that.

The noon had gone. Muggles were starting their lawn mowers, mapping their tiny gardens with rapturous purpose. Witches and wizards watched their spouses, stirring potions or coffee. Children shrieked, racing on their baby broomsticks, dashing past in blurs. Hyungwon remembered being one of them. Learning to fly and falling over and over. Bruising his palms and knuckles. Hiding from the postman who would come every morning and whose arrival would hush down the whole neighbourhood, causing even the Muggles to act inconspicuous.

Hyungwon turned around, and as if a spell had fallen over him, the sounds of the street went silent at once.

The sun stood white above the garden. Shivering, Hyungwon slumped down on a bench outside his father's treasured greenhouse. The glass construction usually quivered in the cold, the panes milky and wet, dark green plants emerging from hot mist. Not today, though. Today, the greenhouse looked chilled. The door was open. Hyungwon peered inside to see barren soil. Two watering cans stood empty and unused by the door.

It looked like his father had finally given up on trying to become a gardener. Hyungwon had to admit that this time around, the hobby had stuck with him longer than usual.

His father was a self-proclaimed Renaissance man. If an activity existed, his father was sure to give it a go. Before gardening, it had been joinery. Before joinery, it had been winemaking. And before that, he had briefly bred rabbits; that is until the neighbourhood committee had put a stop on it.

As a boy, Hyungwon would accompany his father on fishing trips and treasure hunts. They would collect coins (sixteen in total) and stamps (they had bought an album, but never got to filling it). They would pick chestnuts in autumn and build small boats in spring. Summers his father would spend volunteering _._

At one point, he had dedicated his life to pottery. He'd actually gained some success with his creations, wonky as the vases and mugs were, and his business had flourished for a few months. What he hadn't known, though, was that his wife had enchanted the pieces so they wouldn't break, no matter how hard someone smashed them.

Next to his busy father, Hyungwon's mother the High Court Judge looked positively idle.

The reason that Hyungwon had to Apparate here instead of travelling by Floo Network was that his father had gotten rid of the fireplace in the living room some six, seven years ago. A neighbour had told him that fireplaces were quickly getting out of style. Hyungwon's mother had been lucky to commute to work on foot that day.

(“Well! You've got Hyungwon – and I have a modern living room!” Hyungwon's father had said to his wife, who had managed to step into a puddle of mortar upon entering the room.)

 _You've got Hyungwon_ was his father's excuse for everything. Hyungwon got his name after his maternal grandfather, _and_ he bore his mother's surname, so essentially, he was hers. It had been his father's idea, actually, to name their son Chae Hyungwon, but he had conveniently forgotten about it, and now he used this funny injustice against his person as a way to get away with about just anything.

(“You've got Hyungwon – so I have a greenhouse!”)

Thanks to Hyungwon, his father now owned a collection antiques, twelve barrels of unsold wine, and an abandoned pottery wheel.

Back when Hyungwon was still the Puddlemere captain, his teammates would occasionally goad him into talking about his dad. Hyungwon had quite liked the roar of laughter that would accompany his stories. Gain's grin, because she had known all about having Muggle parents and about their antics. Taehyung's huge, awed eyes. Minhyuk's half-smile.

Hyungwon heard footsteps. He stopped staring inside the barren greenhouse and glanced up to greet his mom. Two steaming teacups floated towards him, his mother's slender figure huddled in a thick coat following them.

“Why didn't you come inside?” she asked instead of _hellos_ and _how are yous_.

“It's nice here.” Hyungwon shrugged. He reached up and plucked one cup from the air. It was one of his father's old creations. The tea smelled of mint and sugar. Closing his hands around the cup, he let them grow warm.

His mother's heavy Scottish brogue had already began to warm up the rest of him.

Stooping above him, she placed a heated up quilt over Hyungwon. She sat beside him. He sensed her critical stare.

“You look thirty,” she stated.

“So do you, mom.”

Giving him a thin-lipped smile, she took a sip of the tea.

“So. What brought you here?”

Hyungwon had to truly think to come up with an answer, and still he came up short.

“Remember Minhyuk?” he said instead, buying himself some time.

“The one who had to repeat a grade?”

“That's him.” Of course his mom would remember Minhyuk primarily as her son's classmate. Sometimes he wondered why childhood lasted so short when it was so _lasting_. “I've been interrogating him for the past week.”

“Well, they said he was a bad egg.”

“He wasn't _that_ bad,” Hyungwon heard himself say.

“His parents were Death Eaters, weren't they?”

“He doesn't have the Dark Mark,” he said, deciphering the unspoken question. “But there's a charge against him, and an eyewitness –”

She cut to the chase. “Did he kill somebody?”

Yes. But he had killed a Death Eater, which was something that Hyungwon and the whole wizarding world had to justify.

Killing wasn't the charge pressed against Minhyuk, though.

“It's about the other curse. _Cruciatus_. He used it during the battle, mom. He used it against someone from our side.”

“Who did he torture?”

“A Hufflepuff student. A bloke we both knew back at school.”

“Did you ask him whether it was self-defence?”

Hyungwon stammered.

“No. Why would he need to defend himself against a Hufflepuff?”

“Hufflepuffs can be very tenacious.”

“But do they go around attacking people?”

“If they think the person in question might be dangerous,” his mom pointed out, “and if they're in the middle of a battle? In the middle of a war? I don't see why not.”

Hyungwon gaped. Calmly, his mother felt his fingers and cheeks and rubbed some warmth into his face.

“That Minhyuk boy... Isn't he a Slytherin?” she asked.

“Yes, but –”

“Is it so far-fetched, then, to assume that the Hufflepuff boy may have thought he had just chanced upon an enemy?”

“Well... no. But wouldn't Minhyuk, I dunno, use _Expelliarmus_ if he just wanted to defend himself?”

“He could've been defending someone else.”

“Someone from the dark side,” said Hyungwon.

“Possibly. But didn't you just say that he wasn't really that bad, and that he doesn't even have the Mark?”

That silenced Hyungwon. He turned to his half-empty cup. Let the tang of mint sting in his nose. His lips were beginning to go numb with cold, so he took a hearty gulp.

“Did the boy confess?” she inquired. She combed a few softly waving strands from Hyungwon's eyes.

“No. I don't think he's going to. He's been... dodgy,” said Hyungwon, putting the tea back down.

“And you're letting him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you letting him slip? Are you protecting him?”

“No, I –”

Tipping his head back, he breathed out.

His mother watched him. “You used to be classmates. And then teammates. It makes sense to –”

“I'm not protecting him, mom. I believe he did it. But I also believe that he isn't a Death Eater. So it... it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. I don't see why he would raise his wand against an ally, much less to use a spell like that.”

“Did you ask him that? Or is he not cooperating with you at all?”

“He is, but... he always shifts the subject. There's a whole protocol to follow, you know that. But he keeps changing the topic and stalling. It's like he doesn't even care about the sentence he's facing.”

It feels like being back at Hogwarts, he thought, and taunted.

The old Minhyuk had a way of shaping lies into truth. This new Minhyuk was his very opposite. Hyungwon didn't know why, but all the things Minhyuk had said sounded like truths dressed up as lies.

“I have no clue what to do,” he sighed, the defeat in his voice making his mom sit upright.

“I'll tell you what to do. Cut the bullshit, love. Don't let him digress anymore. File the protocol from what he's already told you, say that the evidence is against him, and make him plead for Veritaserum.”

“Mom!” He pretended to be shocked.

“What? The boy deserves it for all those Howlers we used to get from Hogwarts because of him. And for all those torn up dresses and black eyes.” Resolute, she got up. “Let's go warm up. Come on, don't gawk at me.”

Cracking his spine, Hyungwon stood up. He bundled up the blanket in his arms and trailed after his mom like an obedient duckling.

“Dad's inside?” he called.

“Yes. Rebuilding the old fireplace.” She threw a smirk over his shoulder. “Apparently, _travelling_ is in style again.”

 

 

His mother had met Minhyuk twice.

The first time they had seen each other, Hyungwon was still a student. Both their parents had been called to school because Minhyuk and Hyungwon had broken each other's noses after one of the joint training sessions. They'd done it inside the castle. Inside the Great Hall. Right in front of the staff table.

Their parents had come to remedy the problem, wearing their best robes and their best reproachful expressions. Hyungwon's dad, of course, had sported a pair of Muggle jeans and his favourite tweed jacket. He “didn't like the Lee kid one bit.” Hyungwon couldn't blame him, given that Minhyuk had looked especially sullen with his nose all bloody and body high-strung.

While the parents had busied themselves with judgy glances, silently putting the blame on the other pair of guardians, Minhyuk and Hyungwon had been leading the same fight. Except they had been very vocal about it, trying to _take_ the bigger part of the blame. After all, the culprit would come out of the brawl braver and victorious.

“What's gotten into you?” Hyungwon's father had accused after leaving the headmaster's office and saying a polite but definitely cool goodbye to the Lee family. “My son, fighting with Slytherins! In front of the professors!”

“The boy looked wiry,” his mother had calmly commented. “The wiry ones are usually stronger than they look. Did you say he's good at Quidditch, Won?”

“When he doesn't cheat,” said Hyungwon vaguely.

“How can you make light of it?” His father had whirled around, handsome features scrunching up to glare at his wife. “That Lee kid shouldn't be allowed on the team. This is unsportsmanlike conduct!”

“I hope you realize that the same punishment would await your son,” Hyungwon's mother had said. “The boy's face was _totaled_.”

Hyungwon had grinned at that, a shy grin that he'd tried to hide from his father only to fail miserably.

The second time Hyungwon's mother had met Minhyuk, it was spring 1998. Puddlemere United had just demolished the Appleby Arrows. The coach had thrown the team a small but lively party, inviting the parents and siblings to boost the morale. At that point, Hyungwon and Minhyuk had been colleagues for some time. Both pairs of parents had said their pleasantries and praised the other couple's son, secretly thinking that _their_ son was a slightly better player anyway.

By the end of the night, Hyungwon's mother had been laughing at Minhyuk's wit, letting him pour her another glass.

 

 

They had met three times in total, actually, only Hyungwon didn't remember. He'd been comatose. If he had been awake, he'd have seen his mother and Minhyuk checking up on him, the burnt down towers of the Hogwarts castle smouldering behind them.

 


	6. VI.

_2002_

Monday couldn't have come sooner.

The sound of the alarm clock pierced through the silence just like it did every twenty-four hours. Hyungwon reached out and turned the thing off. He got up. Put on his robes. Brushed his hair with his good hand.

Reaching the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic while the sky was still purplish, Hyungwon stepped out of the fireplace. His throat burned with a stifling residue of hot ashes.

He pushed his way through the Atrium. Not sparing a glance at the staircase, he went straight to the elevator queue. One of the gilded cubes transported him underground.

Jooheon was guarding the door.

“He's already inside,” he told Hyungwon the second he spotted him.

Sparing Jooheon a curt nod, Hyungwon walked straight in, eyes falling on the back of Minhyuk's neck. Being the good prisoner he was, Minhyuk sat tied to his chair, silvery trickles of lights glimmering around his chest and back. The light shifted and poured as he moved to look behind, disintegrating into glitter and nothingness.

Hyungwon took a seat across from him.

“They finally started feeding me prison food,” announced Minhyuk as soon as Hyungwon's thighs touched the chair. He sounded proud. He was dressed in beige-gold brocade, his robes missing the outer coat despite the cold which reigned underground. A row of golden buttons ran down the middle of his chest.

The two-day fast hadn't left a single trace on him.

Hyungwon left the remark about prison food unanswered.

“I completed the rest of your testimony and turned it to the Auror Department this morning,” he said. “The final draft states that you participated in the battle, that you flew there, and that you claim to have fought for the Order of the Phoenix.”

“I thought you weren't finished interrogating me.”

“I wasn't finished, but I was done.” There was a finality to Hyungwon's tone despite the play on words. The borderline light-heartedness of the line seemed misplaced as the walls of the interrogation chamber closed in on them.

“Alright,” said Minhyuk, his curiosity – or something deeper, darker – visibly piqued.

“Hos – the Aurors told me that they had discovered traces of dark magic when examining your wand.”

“Unsurprising.”

Hyungwon didn't look away from Minhyuk as he started to leaf through a clean file.

“The Aurors know about the Unforgivables. I gave them a signed confirmation that you resorted to the Killing Curse in self-defense.”

“It wasn't self-defense. It was defense.”

“But,” continued Hyungwon, “I couldn't corroborate that you used the _other_ curse to defend yourself.”

Conscience aside, Hyungwon could not cover for Minhyuk even if he wished to. The law required witnesses to submit their memories for investigation.

He still had a memory-extracting exam ahead of him. In eight hous. Eight hours until he had to relive Yoongi's brother's death. He shuddered at the thought. His mind felt gooey and all too impressionable these days, like a basinful of thickening gelatine, and the goo hurt and hardened in all the wrong places whenever he tried to _forget_. The last thing he needed was someone's wand prodding at his temple to extract those tearing, wispy memories that he half-wished weren't real and _definitely_ wished had never happened.

Refusing the exam wasn't an option, though.

The Killing Curse, unlike _Cruciatus_ , wouldn't just put Minhyuk to Azkaban. Casting it at someone was the quickest way to earn the Dementor's kiss. Hyungwon needed to confirm that Minhyuk had used it against a Death Eater, otherwise the man who sat in front of him might be less than a shell a month from now.

Hyungwon tried to imagine Minhyuk soulless, with sunken eyes staring at nothing in particular. The picture was so foreign to him that the nerves running in his fingers jolted, causing a sheet of paper slip from between his fingertips. Foam-like unease spread through the rest of his body.

When he considered that there had been times he actually thought of Minhyuk as soulless, Hyungwon had to grimace at his younger self's judgement.

Patting for the paper, he found it and picked it up again.

“I think it's high time we got to the point of the whole investigation,” said Hyungwon. “Unless you want to add something to your testimony or change the initial statement.”

“There's nothing to add. I _did_ fight in the battle and I _did_ kill Yoongi's brother.”

“And you were on the Order's side,” said Hyungwon, purposefully pausing.

“Yes, please.”

“Interesting. So why did you torture Im Jaebum until he bit off his own tongue?”

Minhyuk didn't miss a beat.

“Because he's always been a massive dickhead.”

 

_1998_

“Wake up.”

Black tar poured over his thoughts, eyes, bones. The inside of his skull felt forced apart. He didn't feel his arm at all.

He was going to open his eyes and see the Quidditch stadium.

“Wake up, Hyungwon.”

He opened his eyes. Sunlight startled him.

Someone was lifting his shoulder. Someone very close. It took Hyungwon a minute to recognize the well-known slant of the eyes and the sharp tip of the nose. No wonder that it took him so long, seeing that Kihyun's face swam in sweat and soot, caked blood blackening his mouth and throat.

Another, paler face appeared right in front of Hyungwon, unsmiling. Hyungwon tried to hold his mother's hand, but couldn't. It was as if he had no hand.

“Who won?” he croaked.

“We did, love.” His mother cupped his cheek. The palm of her hand looked like Kihyun's mouth; blackened. Only the lines of her palm ran white, cracking the dried up blood. “We won the war.”

“But the match...”

Hyungwon's mother and Kihyun exchanged a glance.

Mediwizards rushed by in a tight group. Rolling his sleeves up, Kihyun got up and ran after them. He came back at once with two of the Mediwizards marching behind him. It all happened faster than Hyungwon could manage to form another thought.

Only when the Healers kneeled beside Hyungwon and began to force-feed him a fire-tasting vial of potion, he realized that there was something wrong. He darted a look at his right arm.

The thing looked boneless, the flesh so tender and colourful that he threw the potion right up. He lost consciousness for the third time that day.

Around him, people celebrated. Mourned. Both.

 

_2002_

“You won't deny it?”

“No.”

“You did it, then. You tortured him.”

“Yes.”

Hyungwon heard the rustle of Dementors' robes; heard their rattled breath.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you torture him?”

“I thought I just answered that.”

“Are you telling me that you tortured a person because he's a _dickhead_?”

“That was a part of it, yeah.”

“Seems to me like you should change your statement after all. Plead guilty.”

“Why?”

“Because now it's clear on whose side you were.”

“Is it?”

“And isn't it? Would a member of the Order or an ally raise a wand against his own?”

Minhyuk stared straight ahead. “Yes. If the person deserved it.”

 

_1998_

Hyungwon's goal in life wasn't to be special.

But the Healers labeled him just that after he'd woken up in the hospital. He'd become their most interesting case overnight, seeing that the floating staircase had powdered his bones and torn his nerves to the point of no return. Magic failed him. What would otherwise be remedied with one strong brew of Skele-Gro if his bones had retained their solid state, took Hyungwon weeks of drop-sized doses, months of spellwork, and ages trapped in the Muggle-invented Ilizarov apparatus. Months and ages – only to restore the shape of his arm.

Moving that goddamn flank of meat was a whole nother thing.

It was fine, though. From what he'd overheard, he could count himself lucky that he _had_ an arm. The Mediwizards had brought up amputation right there on the battlefield.

He had Kihyun to thank for staying whole.

Being in someone's debt and not even remembering it sure felt strange. Whenever Hyungwon tried to think back, he got stuck staring at the sea of Patronuses. He didn't really recall the match, either. Severe head trauma, the Healers had said. It will all come back, they'd said.

It didn't, but to Hyungwon, the blank space in his head seemed like a blessing. He could've ended up worse. There were people wandering through the hospital wing, war survivors like him, who'd lost more than just careers or memories or limbs. They'd lost their minds.

The stretch between May 1998 and January 1999 came and went, the time passing in between being both the longest and most fleeting passage of Hyungwon's life. While the world was changing, Hyungwon sat stagnant in the hospital, swallowed up by this liminal space where he existed only as a _used-to-be_ someone, or the case number 19.

His arm never recovered. It was just as useless when he left St. Mungo's as it had been in May, only it looked prettier.

The Quidditch season began around February. Hyungwon steadfastly ignored the invitations to come and meet and motivate the old team, and Kihyun eventually did something to stop the letters.

The injury aside, Hyungwon had zero desire to go. What was the point in meeting his former teammates? He'd be meeting ghosts. The team was shorter of Gain and Taehyung, and Minhyuk was still abroad.

Somewhere along the way, Hyungwon stopped answering the owl post altogether.

 

_2002_

Minhyuk leaned forward, as far as the spell would let him. A strangling mass of silver strings dented his robes.

“Who turned me in? Jaebum?”

“There was no one else there.”

“You sure about that?”

Hyungwon spared him a questioning look even though he knew full well it wouldn't earn him an answer anyway.

The timer tick _ed ed ed._

Pulling back, Minhyuk lifted his chin, and Hyungwon suddenly saw him in his old Slytherin robes. The vision disappeared once he turned his focus on the magical shackles again, the strings now looser around Minhyuk's torso as he straightened his back against the backrest.

“I want Veritaserum,” said Minhyuk out of the blue.

“Excuse me?”

“Veritaserum. We can go on with the interrogation once I'm dosed.”

“Are you being serious?”

Minhyuk grinned, soundless, like a snake baring its fangs.

He finally looked like he was fighting for something.

“Deadass.”

“But that means –”

“I know. It can incriminate me.”

“If you have anything to hide –”

“I don't.” The shackles shimmered. “I'll tell you everything. And I will trust you to trust me.”

A set of keys rattling at his hip, Hyungwon stood up. The ting-a-ling of the keys crept through his body like cold breeze, making him shiver. He ignored the chills and walked past Minhyuk. Without looking.

Without looking back.

Jooheon lit up once Hyungwon walked out the door.

“Did he confess?”

“Not yet. But he asked for Veritaserum.”

“Even better for us,” decided Jooheon. The dips of his dimples deepened, the smooth of his cheeks rippling lightly as anticipation reforged his features. He clasped the taller man's good arm. “Didn't I say so? It's always just a matter of time before these _purebloods_ shit themselves and start singing.”

 

_1998_

A ray of blue took him down like laundry off the clothesline. He went slack. The handle of his broomstick slipped from his grip and smacked his face as he fell forward.

Spiralling towards the ground, the broomstick gave a kick under him, and the tip broke as it crashed down.

Minhyuk rolled over and covered his ears. They were blocked. His head was a struck bell, tolling tolling tolling.

He groaned. He was good at casting spells and curses, but deflecting them wasn't his forte. Writhing on his back, he searched his Quidditch gear with a shaky hand until he gripped the hilt of his wand.

“ _Finite Incantatem_ ,” he gritted trough his teeth.

It didn't work. The bells inside his head kept ringing.

The school grounds swarmed with silhouettes. Minhyuk saw them with his eyes, but didn't really register any of them with his reason. It didn't occur to him to move; to hide. He lay there with a heavy head, heaving. A palace-sized weight pressed upon his temples. The black of the sky made him feel dead and buried, and the glazed darkness weighed just as much as the pain in his ears, pouring over him.

A wave of bodies rolled past. Minhyuk lifted himself up enough to see Mark and Jinyoung dragging a struggling Jaebum towards the castle.

“You were in Dumbledore's Army,” rasped Jinyoung loudly, voice breathy with effort, “so what the hell were you doing holed up with the first years in Hogsmeade?”

“Desertion denied,” huffed Mark.

“Exactly. Thanks, Mark.” Jinyoung laughed as he yanked his friend by the arm. “But don't confuse desertion with dessert, folks! Everyone who survives gets a cookie!”

Zonked out because of the curse that had hit him earlier, Minhyuk scattered into soundless little laughs. Gasping, crawling, he rolled back over and started to get up.

The high had gone by the time he reached the castle.

His wand felt like solid heartbeat in his hand. Surging through and becoming one with him.

Empty, the hall quivered with the echo of his brisk march. Minhyuk walked with his face uncovered. His name was still a cover enough. He was safe from the Death Eaters.

His father and Hyungwon weren't, though.

 

_2002_

The vial smoked. Hyungwon put down the glass stopper.

“Do you still want to do this?”

“Yes.”

“It can be suicide.”

Instead of responding to him, Minhyuk opened his mouth. Held it open. Tongue down.

Hyungwon took the vial and let one, two, three, _four_ drops run down Minhyuk's tongue. Then, all Hyungwon had to do was ask.

“Why did you attack Im Jaebum?”

“Because he tore down the staircase.”

 


	7. VII.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2002 - present.  
> 1998 - the Battle of Hogwarts.  
> 1991-1994 - Hogwarts years.
> 
> A/N: Bear with me. There is more Hogwarts flashbacks and explanations to come.

_1998_

“Do you think that I threw my life away to see you die here? I told you _not to come._ I _forbade you –_ ”

His father crushed Minhyuk's arms in a vice-like grip. He spoke from under the silver mask of Dark Lord's followers which was half man, half skull. His voice was tinny.

“So you've really convinced yourself that joining Him is the only option?” asked Minhyuk. “That living in fear is better than fighting Him?”

Hissing, his father gripped him harder. Minhyuk smelled metal on his breath, filtering through the mask.

“None of that matters now. Go. _Go_ , son.”

“I'm not leaving you –”

“GO!” His father shook. From his fingers to the slim slope of his shoulders.

And Minhyuk saw something no child should see. He witnessed his father breaking. Even though Minhyuk couldn't see his face, he knew.

It was worse than seeing his proud Death Eater of a mother support the Dark Lord openly. Worse than knowing he'd been bred and born just to join Him too.

“Dad, I _can't_ ,” he whispered.

“You can. You must. You don't have His mark – so whatever happens, whoever wins, you will survive.”

Although much older, and well past his prime and past his Quidditch years, his father dragged him with such force that Minhyuk momentarily lost all will to move his body. He stumbled, shoes squeaking over the floor. His father hauled him along. Lifeless. And then flailing. Fumbling, fighting, almost. One step. Two steps. Ten steps.

Minhyuk finally found his balance.

“I'm _not_ going,” he gritted out. He yanked at his father's arm and brought him several steps back, and his father screamed at him again, and Minhyuk screamed back.

And then someone cast a spell at them. And another spell. And missed both times.

And ran.

And Minhyuk shrugged his father off and ran too. Ran. Ran. _Ran_.

Ran to the staircase –

 

_2002_

“Are you telling me that Jaebum attacked _you_?”

“Yes.” Minhyuk's tongue moved on its own. “At first I guessed that he was firing at my father to protect me from a Death Eater. But he was aiming at both of us.”

“Wasn't he correct to assume that...”

“Like father, like son? Oh, he was correct to assume that. He was absolutely correct. Because neither my father nor I have _ever_ once believed in the Dark Lord. In that one thing, we were the same.”

“But your father joined You-Know-Who.”

“Yes.”

“On his own will?”

“No.”

“Why then?” Tick. Tock. “To save you?”

“Yes.”

“Does it mean you've never belonged to You-Know-Who and his followers? Never, not even once have you agreed with his ways?”

“Never.”

 

 

It hadn't started with falling for a half-blood.

It hadn't started with seeing Kihyun fall for a Muggleborn, either.

Minhyuk had always been like this, and for that, he would forever be indebted to his father. Ever since Minhyuk could remember, his father would always tell him not to be too proud of his blood.

“Every rat has its ancestors,” he would say.

“We all bleed the same,” was another grimly wise thing he would say often; that is, when his wife was out of earshot.

It was true, what his father would preach, because Minhyuk had seen house elves bleed, and half-bloods, and pure-bloods too, and there was nothing particularly noble or pure about pure-bloods bleeding. No blue blood. No self-cleaning blood stains. Pure-bloods even screamed the same and begged the same like the scum they scorned.

Not that Minhyuk had never scrunched up his nose at someone as a kid, or called anyone scum. He had. He just had better reasons to do it than because of someone's blood status.

“Don't worry, dad,” Minhyuk would reply, still too small to enunciate his words properly. “I will only hate _some_ people.”

But sometimes it was hard, even hating only some people.

Like hating Hoseok, who had always hung around Kihyun. Or hating Hyunwoo, whom Minhyuk should have considered his childhood nemesis because nobody had ever crushed the Slytherin team the way Hyunwoo used to.

Or hating his mother. His mother who ruined everything and everyone she laid her eyes on.

Or the boy who could read minds, and had once read Minhyuk's.

 

_1991 – 1994_

He hadn't noticed Hyungwon until Kihyun pointed him out.

“He's a really good Seeker, this one. No fouls.”

“The Gryffindor kid? Gryffindors never foul, Ki.”

“Oh, they do,” replied his tiny friend, hefting his brand new broomstick over his shoulder. He grimaced bitterly. “They foul _me_. Because I'm small and a Slytherin and because they are Gryffindors, so it gives them every moral right to cheat against someone like me. Especially when I'm two seconds away from catching the Snitch.”

Minhyuk looked over to the other half of the pitch. The Gryffindor team had gathered under the goal posts in a wonky, happy circle. The crimson-clothed group gave a many-voiced huff, grasping the captain and throwing him into the air one, two, three times to celebrate the victory. Hyunwoo laughed sheepishly, and when the throne of arms broke under him and he wobbled back to his feet, he steadied himself on the Seeker's shoulder. Minhyuk looked closer. He eyed the lanky Seeker up and down.

Merlin, was he tall.

“And this one plays fair?” he addressed to Kihyun.

“So far, yeah. He even stopped once to check if I was okay when he accidentally bumped into me.” As if remembering the crash, Kihyun rubbed his elbow.

There was this thing about Kihyun and Minhyuk, and everyone in the Slytherin House knew it. They shared everything. From their earliest memories to their darkest thoughts. From snacks sent by their parents and gifts received on dates and overall just _objects_ to people. To friends.

Once Kihyun befriended someone, the person became Minhyuk's other half. Once Minhyuk put his trust in someone, Kihyun in turn put trust in Minhyuk's judgement.

So Minhyuk went on with his life with this thought at the back of his head: that Chae Hyungwon had treated Kihyun fairly, and for that he must be repaid.

 

 

Minhyuk had the chance to pay him back during the next match.

The game was going in Slytherin's favour. A light drizzle had moistened Minhyuk's clothes, misting his eyelashes and protective goggles. He wiped the goggles and surged ahead. Taking the Quaffle from Namjoon, he raced towards the Gryffindor hoops.

Something flew past him. A blur – a swish of something dark and solid – and a stray Bludger narrowly missed him only to hit Hyungwon square in the back of the head. The kid didn't utter a sound. He toppled over, let go of his broomstick, and came down like a rock cast in the sea. His limbs fluttered like lifeless wings.

Minhyuk passed the Quaffle to Yoongi and dove down.

And down. And down.

And then he caught him.

He caught Hyungwon millimetres away from the ground.

The tip of Minhyuk's broomstick grazed the earth several times until he managed to pull the handle up. He slowed, clutching the broomstick with only one hand. Feet brushing the soil underneath. Head spinning.

The tribunes could have been on fire, they were so loud. People yelled. Everyone yelled. Terrified shrieks turned to relieved shrieks, but they were still shrieks. The referee ran across the field towards them, so Minhyuk slowed down even further, clutching Hyungwon with all his might. He tamed the broomstick with a sharp tug and carefully climbed off. He held Hyungwon in his arms, blinking down at him as the Gryffindor boy blinked up.

Hyungwon weighed a lot, but Minhyuk supposed that most of it was the Quidditch gear. When he touched Hyungwon's wrist, it felt papery. Thin. It would have broken in half had the boy fallen.

Hyungwon groaned as Minhyuk laid him down. Nothing happened for a while.

Only then Minhyuk started to panic.

Hyungwon groaned again. He feebly wormed his way out of Minhyuk's clutch and reached up. His hand groped around, feeling Minhyuk's features as though it belonged to a blind man. Then, with yet another pained sound, Hyungwon's hand stilled. Settled over Minhyuk's mouth.

“Your thoughts are so loud... I can't hear my mouth...” he mumbled, obviously out of it. “Like in that one _Modest Mouse_ song...” he babbled on.

Gaping, Minhyuk spared a second to wonder how could mice be modest, but then the referee was there and so were the professors, and he no longer felt Hyungwon's clammy hand on his face and his thoughts got _really_ loud.

The match was postponed until the end of November.

 

 

A box full of candy he'd stolen from Kihyun probably wasn't the best get-well-soon gift ever, but Minhyuk had convinced himself that it was better than bringing the Gryffindor kid his own half-eaten birthday cake, which had begun to go dry and crusty at the edges. Holding the box under his arm, Minhyuk slipped his way into the Hospital Wing.

It was late. The place smelled too clean, of washed linens and herbs. Of smoke too, faintly, because the nurse brewed her infamous potions on the spot.

Nobody else was in the roomy sickroom today. Nobody but Hyungwon and the nurse. The place _teemed_ with silence. Buzzed with it. Minhyuk walked softly (because disrupting the eerie quiet of the room seemed a sacrilege even to him); so softly that he went unnoticed, as if he hadn't even entered the room.

Sneaking was his second nature, after all.

When he heard the nurse's voice, he stopped in his tracks. A weird sensation trapped him in a see-through cage – a realization that maybe he shouldn't be here. Brow crinkling, he ducked behind one of the screens that separated the hospital beds.

“Has it ever happened to you before?” asked the nurse sharply, for some reason pointing a lighted up wand at Hyungwon's eyes. Shining into them. Staring.

Prying.

“No,” said Hyungwon. His tone was both deep and meek. “Not on its own. My mother has taught me some basics of Legilimency – but only the basics – she's a judge, you see, so she had studied mind-reading when she was younger –”

The nurse grumbled in response, which Minhyuk guessed must have been something along the lines of _What a fancy thing to teach a fourteen-year-old! Are these parents out of their minds?_

Hyungwon went even more sheepish, but didn't tear away even as the nurse lifted his chin higher and scrutinized him.

“Can you still do it? Can you hear my thoughts?”

“Yes.” Then, finally reeling back, Hyungwon added: “I'm sorry.”

The nurse exhaled deeply.

Minhyuk didn't bring the box of sweets over.

 

 

“Ki, can mice be modest?”

“It's midnight.”

“You didn't answer.”

“And I won't. Because it's midnight.”

“But if Hoseok asked, you would be all _Let's find out, hyung_!”

“He will be my husband one day. He can ask me if there's a miniature civilization inside every snowflake and I will hand him a sourced essay on snowflake peoples by the end of the day.”

“Your husband.”

“Yes.”

“Your gay, Muggleborn husband.”

“You like boys too, Min.”

“But I won't marry one.” He listened to the dark for a bit. “I can't.”

“Neither can I, but I will. Goodnight.”

“Can't you marry me, Ki? Maybe my mother won't kill me if I marry a _pure-blood_ boy,” he grinned.

A pillow landed on his face.

“Okay, okay, I get it. No marriage. Sheesh.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I hate you.”

“You don't,” sighed Kihyun, bunching up blankets and rolling over. “You don't hate anyone.”

“Now I do. Are you proud to be the first one?”

Kihyun fake-snored, and then a pillow landed on _his_ face.

 

 

Over night, the boy who had treated Kihyun fairly became the boy whose eyes Minhyuk couldn't meet.

At first, it didn't matter. They had no mutual friends. Shared no classes. And when, very rarely, the Slytherin and Gryffindor teams met to train together, it was Kihyun who had to worry about Hyungwon, not Minhyuk.

Things went on. Normal.

For some time.

Minhyuk aced his exams and returned to Hogwarts as a sixth year. Well. _Almost_ aced his exams – except for Divination. Nobody at home truly cared about that class, though, and Minhyuk had only taken it to placate his grandma, who fancied herself a great Seer. He planned to retake the class because of grandma's nagging, but rather than mastering the subject, he wanted to show her, by failing twice, that Divination was utter bollocks.

He was pretty pleased with himself, really.

Until he walked into the dimmed down classroom and discovered that the last remaining sad-looking seat crouched next to Hyungwon. Minhyuk looked straight at him, and then remembered that he shouldn't, for some reason, and he immediately tried to erase those dark doe eyes from his mind. Sweating in the stuffy attic where the Divination class took place, Minhyuk strolled over to one of the fifth years and hovered over him.

“Move.”

“That's my seat.”

“Did you make it? Did you buy it?”

“No, but I sat on it first.”

“And I will sit on you if you don't move it.”

“Try it, Slytherin scum.”

Oh. This one was mouthy. Minhyuk only now noticed that the guy was sporting a red silk tie and a lion emblem on the front his robes.

But the boy had been wrong to think Minhyuk _wouldn't_ try.

The class roared with laughter. Minhyuk gave them quite a show, enjoying his human chair until the professor rushed in and found Minhyuk all cosy on the Gryffindor guy's lap, preventing the squirming body under him from getting up.

“Of course, Lee Minhyuk! Who else!” harangued professor Kim as soon as she saw him, tea cups and parcels full of tea leaves clinking and rustling in her arms as she marched to the front of the classroom. “I was hoping I was rid of you for good.”

“But didn't you predict I would be back, professor?” he said sweetly.

The professor fumed for a moment or two, but her sense of humour betrayed her and she spared Minhyuk a rare smile.

“Take a seat. And don't disrupt my class.”

“I'm seated, professor.”

“Take a seat that _isn't breathing_.”

“That could be remedied,” Minhyuk quipped, dragging a touch over the Gryffindor's throat. Lovingly. Like a cuddly viper.

The cups trapped in professor Kim's embrace clattered threateningly. Defeated but grinning, Minhyuk stood up, smoothed his robes down, mumbling a voiceless _alright, alright_ –

– and looked at Hyungwon again.

Hyungwon was looking right back at him.

 

 

It hadn't started with his parents joining the Dark Lord's army.

It hadn't started with being born into a pure-blood family whose motto glistened in burnished silver above the entrance door, _Toujours Pur_.

It hadn't started with either of that.

Because Minhyuk hadn't always been like this. He hadn't always shied away from half-bloods or from Muggleborns or boys. After all, Minhyuk was everyone's friend, if nobody's first choice. He had acquaintances everywhere: people he could laugh with and people he could laugh at. Use. Coax. Control. None of those friends and semi-friends had the power to see through Minhyuk, though, unless he counted Kihyun, and so he needn't build walls and breakwaters and borders.

That was before Hyungwon.

With Hyungwon, Minhyuk had to build barriers in what used to be a vacuum. He had to lock previously unlocked things. Had to close every door and every chamber of his mind, otherwise a complete stranger would know.

Know that Minhyuk once had two sisters. Used to be their favourite pet before the oldest one married a Muggle and the younger one died only a figurative death, shipped off like cattle to some Bulgarian dark wizard or other, never to be heard of again. Sold to keep the bloodline clean.

Hyungwon would learn other things. He'd learn that Minhyuk had seen people die, sometimes at the hands of his own mother. That he had seen his father beg and sob and crawl. Had seen how the Dark Lord's tattoo spread over his father's skin with His every call, slithering over his veins, sinking into his body like ink into water. Had seen how it hurt. Had seen it grow black, gnawing at the paleness of his father's inner wrist.

The stranger who already felt too familiar to Minhyuk would see it too, and know, and judge him; and Minhyuk would never have him then. He would never have him because the purity that Minhyuk's family preached wasn't pure at all, and neither was Minhyuk, at heart. He would never have him because he'd seen too much, and been complacent with too much, at the age of fucking sixteen.

He would never have him, and the choice wouldn't be his.

But this could be. This... hate.

 

_2002_

“Is that – was _that_ why you said you would never sit next to someone like me? Because you didn't want me to hear your thoughts?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn't because I am a half-blood?”

“No.”

“So all those times when you'd refuse to train with Gryffindors or hang out together after Hyunwoo and I first got chummy with Kihyun... it was because you feared that I might see inside you?”

Minhyuk bit the inside of his bottom lip. “Partly.”

Hyungwon stared at him.

“It was also because I feared that I might see inside _you_ when you were both there, together. You and Hyunwoo, I mean,” said Minhyuk, feeling the implied question seep into his skin like dew; feeling the force of Veritaserum as it urged him to speak.

The lines crossing Minhyuk's palms had gathered sweat. He clenched his fists and unclenched. Clenched them and unclenched. Balled. Relaxed. Relaxed. He watched his own veins and bones pop up and down in his wrist, a clockwork of nerves, and recalled the moments in which he couldn't calm down at all, no matter what.

All those times he'd run. All those fucking things he'd said. Things he'd told to hurt someone else than himself for a change.

The times he'd fouled Hyungwon on the field, afraid that the other boy might fly too close.

He had even gone to Durmstrang.

To avoid those eyes.

And when he'd come back to Hogwarts, the eyes wouldn't land on him anymore. Not that he could blame Hyungwon for that. It had been his own choice, to ruin it all. Ruin it before it had even begun.

Without Kihyun there, there'd been no one to stop Minhyuk from being his unabridged self. The real self which latched onto things, warm things, breathing things, good things. The piece of him which wasn't used to not having Kihyun around. So he would get in Hyungwon's face. He'd make up for what he had wasted, only to fuck up more, fuck up so grandiosely that simultaneously with convincing the world that he hated Hyungwon, Hyungwon ended up hating him.

No amount of eye-gazing and baring himself could have changed that. Minhyuk knew, because he'd tried. He'd talked to Hyungwon with his eyes alone, and it hadn't worked.

Hyungwon had no clue, still.

“You can't do it anymore. Can you?” asked Minhyuk out of nowhere, as blank as before.

“Read minds? No.”

And Hyungwon really couldn't have, for what felt like ages, because Minhyuk had tried to speak to him without words before. So many times. Back at school. In Puddlemere United.

To no avail.

Hyungwon carried on talking, and he truly must've lost the ability to read Minhyuk's thoughts; because if he could still do it, he'd be reeling.

“Reading minds is extremely intricate. It requires composure and clarity. Nowadays I can't do it at all, even when I pour my everything into it. Spell or no spell. I just can't. I haven't been able to do it since the battle.”

“But you could do it when you were younger. For a very long time.”

“Not really, no. Only for a few days right after the injury. The nurse never figured out why I could suddenly hear thoughts without trying, but I just assumed it was because I had gotten whacked in the head pretty hard and something there just...” Hyungwon tapped his temple, then snapped his fingers.

 _Something there had gone wrong, briefly,_ he seemed to say.

Minhyuk leaned in. “So you – wait, you're telling me that you couldn't – that you couldn't actually read people's thoughts on a whim? But you...”

But he'd done it twice. It didn't make sense. Minhyuk stared.

“That's right. It was only after the mach. After I got better, I stopped hearing things. It was all a one-time thing. Well... sort of. I was still able to use the _Legilimens_ spell back then and it worked alright, although I would have to focus on it really hard. But that's the thing. I had to do it consciously. Unless...”

“Unless?”

“Unless there was something wrong with my head again. Then my thoughts would go haywire. Like when I got hurt.” Hyungwon reflected on that. “Or drunk.”

“Drunk? Like that night when we...?”

 


	8. VIII.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2002 - present.  
> 1998 - the Battle of Hogwarts.  
> 1991-1994 - Hogwarts years.

_1991 – 1994_

Hyunwoo's famed Good Guy Face could come in handy sometimes, Minhyuk had to give him that. It definitely _did_ come in handy tonight. If it hadn't been for Hyunwoo and his trustworthy voice (and other assets), Madame Rosmerta would never have allowed for a bunch of students to rent a suite above her pub. The six of them wouldn't be sitting here right now, scattered over poufs and loveseats and, like Yoongi, the floor.

The night was balmy and full of fireflies. Minhyuk didn't find it surprising to see clouds of gold lighten up the sky above Hogsmeade. Wizards revered fireflies, and fireflies flocked to wizards. There was a reason why Muggles found it so magical when they found a meadow covered in a goldrush of misty light.

There was another thing wizards revered, Minhyuk noted, and it was Firewhisky.

He took a heavy swallow, letting the cool but somehow still scorching liquid liven him up from the inside. It didn't work, just like the whisky didn't work on the rest of them. The problem with alcohol was that it was enough only when it was enough. But sometimes it wasn't. Some thoughts weren't meant to be drowned. Some thoughts buoyed right back.

Sure, yeah. They shouldn't be so gloomy. They were free – for tonight. The semester was over and the summer had just begun. They had until morning before they had to return to their homes and families. (They had until morning before they must start to pray that the war would wait for two more months; because if it didn't, they might never see the Hogwarts Castle or each other again.)

Minhyuk supposed these worries came with growing up. They _were_ grown now, or at the very edge of becoming grown. They were almost adults, and the “almost” burned with impatience and fear that had no borders and no haven for them to hide. Minhyuk hardly had to contemplate how Hyunwoo and Hoseok felt about leaving school for good this year and plunging into what was bound to be an uncertain future.

Hyunwoo had it good, unlike Hoseok. The Gryffindor Pureblood had become engaged earlier this spring to an older woman he actually knew and respected and, Minhyuk didn't have to guess twice, wanted. Hyunwoo was made for that kind of life. He was a prime example of a husband, after all, even at barely eighteen. Minhyuk suppressed a snort. Was this what pulled Hyungwon to him? That famed Gryffindor kindness? How dependable he was? How noble?

Whichever it was, Minhyuk couldn't blame him. Hyunwoo was really fucking kind. Really fucking dependable. Really fucking noble. He had his share of friendliness reserved even for Minhyuk, who wouldn't shake his hand before the match for the entire past year.

Watching the fireflies fly and dissipate behind the window pane, Minhyuk refilled his glass.

Hyunwoo really had it good. What awaited him was travelling and maybe, in time, a marriage that didn't fill him with dread and despect.

Hoseok, though. The Muggleborn had it as bad as bad goes.

Minhyuk stole a slow glance around the living room of the large suit (that the Purebloods all had paid for from their pockets). Eyelids drooping slightly, he stopped at the sight of Hoseok and Kihyun huddled together in one of the loveseats. Hushed, they talked about waiting, and wanting, and wasting time. Talked about families.

The room was small enough that Minhyuk could hear them speak: every word, every sigh. He could hear Hyunwoo and Yoongi discuss the Caucasus and job opportunities there at the very end of the room too. Could hear Hyungwon's soft breathing beside him.

“Just join the Order like we've planned it,” said Kihyun in that silent, I'm-saying-too-little-but-feeling-too-much voice he saved only for Hoseok. That voice that only reached the tip of his tongue, punctuating the syllables with wet little pauses. “I'll come to you right after I graduate. I'll come to you.”

“You don't have to,” whispered Hoseok. “I won't blame you if you don't. I don't want you to –”

“We've talked about this. I'm not _sacrificing_ anything.”

“Your parents will burn your name out from your family tree. They will never take you back.”

“So?”

“I don't want this for you,” said Hoseok with some insistence.

“But do you want _me_?”

Hoseok inhaled. “Ki.”

“Just wait for me. Wait for me one more year and you'll see.”

Hazy like the swarms of fireflies outside, a darkish kind of light sloshed across the room. The lamps were on but covered by uniform shirts. The see-through, warmth-soaked silks let a trifle of the light out, enough to create shadows but not enough for Minhyuk to read expressions unless someone sat very close.

As though in an afterthought, Minhyuk looked at the boy beside him. Hyungwon had his head thrown back, hanging over the top of the backrest of their seat. Not a drop of tension coursed through his body. His head was turned towards the other couple. It was clear that he'd been listening, just as Minhyuk.

It occurred to Minhyuk that Hyungwon may be imagining himself in their place, with Hyunwoo pleading for him to wait. The possibility should've made him feel things. But it didn't. Instead, he just pictured the same thing.

Only he was Hyunwoo in that scenario.

He laughed a little.

Like a pendulum, Hyungwon's head moved from side to side. First, Minhyuk saw the two round slopes of his nose and chin, then he saw the shadows of his eyelashes against the shimmer of one of the lamps. Then his heavy lids. Hyungwon rested his other cheek on the backrest, his eyes the same shade as the subdued lamplight. The same softness that pierced through everything anyway.

A little pinched by the alcohol and by the sudden attention, Minhyuk's temples throbbed. He grew fused under the gaze. Boundless. This was how a log or a rootless lotus flower must feel, material yet out of control of its own body, carried by a thousands hands of water.

It took him a good minute to realize he must never lock eyes with Hyungwon.

His face went tight, his skin suddenly too small, his jaws calcified.

His flesh screamed. Thoughts flooded him, reaching the brim. But the rest of him sat slumped without any care in the world. A deep calm washed over his bones, becoming their very marrow. So what. So _what_. He was going away anyway. After today, there would be no more Hogwarts. No more Hyungwon. It was only doom and Durmstrang for him. What did it matter now if Hyungwon knew? What did it matter, ever?

Minhyuk might never see him again.

He could allow himself to look.

It was the last time, _so what_?

But just as the finality of it all sank into him, Minhyuk broke away from Hyungwon's stare all the same. He grasped for his glass and emptied it. It had been full to the edge. He grimaced, a brief spasm of facial muscles, and he leaned back and turned ahead. Faintly, Yoongi's laughter reached him from across the room, sounding like a bunch of chirping birds. Hyunwoo's honey-heavy little chuckle followed.

Minhyuk (kind of ironically and kind of not) wondered if there was a correlation between heterosexuality and happiness. It seemed to work for Hyunwoo and Yoongi.

Then there was a sound next to him. Minhyuk knew not to look now. But he looked all the same.

Hyungwon had been watching him the whole time. Seemingly unfocused, his pupils spread like ripples in a pond as he let his head fall to the side, shadows claiming his face.

He wore no expression, and unlike other people, being expressionless became him: it was a part of him. He could be so passive. So fucking passive. The only time he wasn't this vacant was when he scuttled after Hyunwoo.

But that was a lie. Hyungwon wasn't vacant when he laughed at Kihyun's sarcasm and when he grew focused on the field and when he talked about his parents with Hoseok. He was only ever vacant when there was nobody around; or when it was only Minhyuk.

Tonight, Hyungwon was blank because Minhyuk didn't sit far enough to let his face bloom – to let gladness come in. He had hooded eyes. Hooded, and hidden, and yet he sliced right through Minhyuk and through every memory that had shaped him, dissecting his mind with one blink. And there was something liberating about being so bare. Something terrifying. Something that told Minhyuk to stare ahead and embrace the judgement that was coming because he'd never known anything else anyway.

The pinch of fatalism allowed Minhyuk to think of himself as Hyunwoo or even Kihyun – think of himself in all those pretty roles he'd rather play than live his life. He yearned for it. Yearned to stay so bad, when he knew he had to run.

After this, he had to run.

The Slytherin part of him wanted to leave and burn everything down behind him. Ruin things perfectly and completely.

Ruin himself.

“Okay,” said Hyungwon, the deep but meek murmur Minhyuk knew so well despite never truly talking to Hyungwon reverberating through the space between them. _Had_ they ever talked after that one Quidditch game, really?

Time sped, or froze. Minhyuk wasn't sure. He just felt a jolt in his stomach, the same flesh-deep flinch that came with fooling time and space and travelling via a Portkey.

Mindful of the thickening silence between them, Minhyuk licked his lips. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” Impassive, Hyungwon stretched. There was Firewhisky on his breath. “Okay.”

“Okay to what?”

“Everything.” Hyungwon didn't even blink. “Everything you just thought.”

The jolt was back, right there in his core.

“I thought of a lot of things,” said Minhyuk.

Of confessing. Of kissing him before he had to go – kissing him good like Gryffindors do. Kissing him nice.

He thought of fucking him.

Languid, Hyungwon got up and crossed the room, beckoning, and Minhyuk crossed it too, and nobody as much as looked up even though the suit was small and not at all sound-proof.

And then there was the door – the key –

The dark.

 

The dark.

It grew inkier with every step instead of becoming thinner. There was no getting used to it, so Minhyuk didn't try.

Maybe he should've kept his eyes open from the very beginning, but _how_. He was too drunk, too focused on walking forward without stumbling, and too much of a gentleman to have his eyes open while kissing a boy – a courtesy he'd learned from Kihyun.

Kissing _Hyungwon_ with his eyes open seemed like a shitty idea in particular, so Minhyuk just kept them shut, shut to the point of his eyelids trembling. He pushed Hyungwon front of him, pushed his whole self against him, pushed his tongue into that warm, warm mouth.

So this was why they called it Firewhisky. Hyungwon could burn him down like an ancient city and Minhyuk would moan for a little more, _yes, now walk over those ashes_.

His breath caught. They hit something. Minhyuk wasn't sure if it was a bed or just another of those limpy loveseats the suite overflowed with, but whatever it was, falling on top of it made Hyungwon give a breathy laugh, and Minhyuk lay right into him to suck the sound in.

Not for the first time, he thanked Hyunwoo for that responsible, Good Guy face of his, and for renting the suite, and for remembering people might want to sleep in actual bedrooms.

Minhyuk ignored the irony of kissing his crush thanks to his crush's crush because _fuck_ , he was kissing his crush.

In no way did he kid himself that Hyungwon wasn't picturing Hyunwoo. Minhyuk shut his eyes even tighter. His crush dreamt of his _own_ crush as he shifted a sure hand down Minhyuk's chest and unhooked one button after another, but Minhyuk didn't let that crush him.

Instead he crushed Hyungwon's hand and guided it to his tie, which hung loose around his neck. He made Hyungwon grab it and tug at one of the ends. The kiss slowed as they both listened to the sound of silk sliding over silk – and then the hunger was back. Their fingers linked, long, a little sweaty. Their fingertips touched. It looked like touching a mirror.

It was so good that Minhyuk forgot that he should be bad.

He held Hyungwon's hand tighter, but broke the kiss. He pulled away far enough to ask without brushing Hyungwon's lips with his.

“You sure?”

He was hoarse.

Parched.

“You said it would be the last time,” slurred Hyungwon. “That's perfect, isn't it? Before you all go.”

Minhyuk hadn't exactly said anything.

But yeah, it would be the first and last time. It was perfect. So perfect that he finally opened his eyes to the comedy of it.

Hyungwon was boring into him already, half-lidded, unfastening his own tie with his free hand.

“You're a mess,” he stated in that sober manner drunks sometimes spoke when they were really battered.

Minhyuk wavered again.

“Yeah. But so are you.”

“Never said I wasn't.”

That wasn't the textbook reply he expected from Hyungwon. He wavered _again_.

“You really want this?”

“I want this.”

He swallowed. He didn't ask if Hyungwon wanted _him_.

Taking off clothes was easier than the rest. Chest to chest, Minhyuk asked if Hyungwon knew the spells to clean himself, and Hyungwon said that no, he didn't, and Minhyuk felt shittier than ever because he knew what that meant.

He patted for his wand. He held it too tight as he murmured the spells in a voice that sounded cold even to him. Hyungwon hissed under him, a slick sensation filling him.

It was weird – to watch. To prep someone. The only boy Minhyuk had been with before had come prepared already.

Minhyuk had expected this part to be clinical. Queasy, at least. Not this. Not this, not this, not this.

“Loud,” groaned Hyungwon. He drowned half of the word in Minhyuk's mouth, kissing him.

At that moment, Minhyuk's mind went all white.

They ground into each other, bodies still apart but fingers hooked together until Minhyuk pried them off one by one. Lightly, he trailed them down Hyungwon's side, stopping to brush a thumb over Hyungwon's hip bone. He squeezed. He shuddered a breath and reached lower. Under.

He'd gone overboard with the other spell, Minhyuk realized as he touched Hyungwon there.

He oozed enough to take him.

Gliding, Minhyuk rubbed his fingers over Hyungwon's perineum, smearing a wet path up and down the taut skin. He kneaded the spot for a few seconds, his heart in his throat because what if Hyungwon changed his mind and what if he didn't; but the boy beneath him gave a soft groan and put his hips up.

That was all Minhyuk needed. His hand tensing, he grazed Hyungwon's rim without a second thought. His confidence came crashing back when he pushed one finger inside him.

The tightness pushed him out for a split second before it sucked him in.

Some of the lube poured out over his knuckles.

Aligning his movements with the rhythm of his finger, he did everything to distract Hyungwon from the pressure. Kept stroking the soft fullness of his taint. Bit his jaw and throat, teeth scraping skin but not squeezing. Whispered something, maybe. Minhyuk thought that he whispered.

He let Hyungwon hold him close by the back of his neck, face hovering above Hyungwon's face, parted mouth hovering above Hyungwon's parted mouth. Hyungwon ran a hand through his hair and Minhyuk reeled.

The second finger went in easier than the first one.

The dark had receded. When Minhyuk pulled away to kneel, Hyungwon saw all of him and he saw all of Hyungwon. His long lashes and long legs and long cock. The view led his hands.

He took Hyungwon's thighs and pressed them together. Angling his hips to the side, Minhyuk put Hyungwon's legs over his shoulder. One shoulder. Turning slightly, he nipped at Hyungwon's thigh.

Hyungwon _snorted_.

“Tickles.”

Minhyuk's mouth curled at the corners. He stroked Hyungwon's legs as he held them firm to his chest.

“Sorry.”

Minhyuk fucked into him.

Staying sane took him even more effort than staying – period. Now he knew he couldn't. He couldn't stay and stay sane at the same time; it was either-that.

It was all too slow for hate sex and too wordless for goodbye sex. Too wordless overall. Minhyuk kept kissing the spot above Hyungwon's knee, focusing on the slaps of skin on skin. The sounds Huyngwon's body made. The noises from next door.

So many noises.

Hissing, Minhyuk squared his shoulders. Shadowy light ran down his rib cage. He took hold of Hyungwon's hip and guided the boy onto his cock, ramming rougher but still slow. His grip could've bruised had Minhyuk wanted to.

The idea of staying signed on Hyungwon somehow, even in the smallest way, sharpened the ache in his groin. He didn't do it – didn't clutch hard enough to bruise – but his hips spasmed and his thrusts turned erratic.

He sank his teeth into Hyungwon's thigh. He inhaled the damp sweetness that coated his skin.

He could sense his head pound.

“Close,” moaned Hyungwon, as if answering a question Minhyuk hadn't asked – out loud.

Minhyuk let his head tip back and fucked Hyungwon until he heard him come. He went on until he was spent too, energy draining out of him while his limbs stayed stiff. He groaned, palm splayed on the underside of Hyungwon's thigh and sliding lower. He shifted his shoulder and carefully put Hyungwon's legs down.

There was a stain under them on the bed sheets. Pearly, it sank into the linen.

“You're really,” slurred Hyungwon, crossing his ankles, “really goddamn loud. All the time.”

“I didn't even moan that much,” defended Minhyuk with a forced little laugh, collapsing onto his elbows and stomach beside Hyungwon.

“You're loud now,” said Hyungwon, a slight snip to his tone that came with being tired out.

He was right, though. Minhyuk's thoughts were so loud that he couldn't hear his own mouth this time around. And that was saying something.

His head was an anvil under a hammer. His thoughts the purest quicksilver. What was usually an endless stream of words and quips and chuckles turned to a congested cube of touch-tender gelatine inside his skull.

“Stop,” murmured Hyungwon. It was still half a moan although Minhyuk wasn't anywhere near him anymore – wasn't inside him.

But Hyungwon was inside him, sloshing through the clarity of Minhyuk's mind that wasn't even clear to him, and he must've felt the same unease that Minhyuk felt.

“I'm trying,” said Minhyuk, and he meant it. He'd been trying so damn hard.

Hyungwon made a tired sound in his throat. Rubbing his face, he gave Minhyuk a side glance.

“It's good you don't hate Hyunwoo. I thought you hated everybody.”

I love you, slipped Minhyuk.

Blinking as a child before falling asleep, Hyungwon rolled onto his side – the other side – and sighed out.

“Don't.”

Minhyuk didn't even hurt. He watched the slope of Hyungwon's back, the ridges of his backbone running like a path of pearls between his shoulder blades. This was all he deserved. More than he deserved. Much more.

At least Hyungwon knew. Right? He knew there was a shard of soul in Minhyuk that hadn't gone bad and loveless.

Curling up, Hyungwon reached behind his back, patting for Minhyuk on the stretch of empty linen between them. When he found the Slytherin's wrist, he pulled him closer. He muttered a low “Goodnight” over his shoulder as Minhyuk pressed himself against his back, hooking his chin over Hyungwon's shoulder.

He clung to that tiny piece of peace offering the whole night.

He didn't sleep. Not even when the door creaked open and Kihyun and Hoseok fell inside the bedroom in what sounded like giggles and sobs. The two ended up in the same bed beside the still couple. Whispering voicelessly, Kihyun used the same spell as Minhyuk before and took Hoseok hard but quiet, quiet, quiet –

– so quiet. Quiet although they talked they whole way through it, never once breaking off. The string of _I'll come to you_ turned to _I'm coming_ and then the quiet was complete.

There were no more fireflies.

 

The first month at Durmstrang flew past fast.

Minhyuk got a letter from Kihyun ever day. The pissed ones came first, then the pleading ones, and then an ultimatum. Kihyun took a week off after that, waiting, probably, for Minhyuk's return – or at least a reply that would explain why he'd left in the first place. When Kihyun didn't get any response at all, the pissed letters made their comeback.

Minhyuk kept them all. Read them all. The hardest ones to read were those that just asked, in that tiny, neat handwriting, if Kihyun had done something wrong. If he'd done something to make Minhyuk go – and go _there_ , out of all places – and keep the transfer for himself on top of things.

Neither of the letters mentioned Hoseok or Hyunwoo or Hyungwon, as though they'd ceased to exist. Minhyuk knew it wasn't because Kihyun didn't care about them. It was because Kihyun cared about him first.

But the care just sealed Minhyuk's lips shut. He couldn't answer because answering once meant he'd have to answer again, and again, and then he would never leave Hogwarts.

As if he'd really left, though. He walked the Durmstrang grounds and thought of the Great Lake and of the great plains of snowdrops that sometimes covered the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest even when it wasn't spring anymore.

He walked the Durmstrang corridors and thought of how the cosiness and goodness all around at Hogwarts suffocated him because he didn't know it, didn't belong anywhere near it – and how the dark that he _did_ know suffocated him here in these barren walls. It was worse than at home.

Because at home he'd seen only some of it. He'd only seen _some_ people who followed the Dark Lord and who preached about purity and killed when ordered to.

The kids here itched to kill because they believed in Him and because killing was fun.

Minhyuk had seen real Death Eaters, but he hadn't seen them in the making.

He could have been one of them.

He could hear his father's words just before they'd parted ways at the end of the summer.

“Don't go there,” he'd said, clasping Minhyuk's face. “Don't turn.”

And Minhyuk had smiled and put his father's hands down, holding them. He'd told him he would never turn. That nothing they would try to teach him here could turn him truly hateful.

He knew himself. He knew what he was made of, grit and all. And he'd been right. Durmstrang had done nothing to make him hate Muggles.

It had done some things to make him hate his own.

The letters never stopped coming while Minhyuk stayed in Bulgaria. But they came sparser and sparser.

The classes Minhyuk was still willing to attend after seeing through his teachers and classmates turned sparser and sparser too. There was only so much murder talk one could stomach in a week. Minhyuk dropped subject after subject after subject. In the end, he stopped going altogether. He had way too much talent for the teachers to leave him be unless he wasn't physically missing – leave him _pure._ Minhyuk would have roared with laughter at the idea of ever calling himself pure prior to Durmstrang.

When he returned back to Hogwarts, his former classmates had gone and there was nobody to send him letters anymore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lurk [here](https://twitter.com/mrtvej_pes)


	9. IX.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2002 - present.  
> 1998 - the Battle of Hogwarts.  
> 1991-1994 - Hogwarts years.

_1991 – 1994_

There was a sort of trepidation to his step when he hopped off the Hogwarts Express. Students brushed past him, the blur of their silhouettes making Minhyuk's post-nap dizziness even dizzier.

He picked up his usual strut fast enough, but even though he could fool about just anyone, he couldn't fool himself. He was an eighteen-year-old amongst seventeen-year-olds; a fuck up who'd fucked up, and fucked up beyond the point of unfucking up. He was about to re-enroll at the same school he'd left with a big bang (Minhyuk snorted at the wording), crawling back like the failure he was.

Except Slytherins and Purebloods never failed.

They simply paved longer paths for themselves.

At least that was what his mother had said.

“You'll have an advantage over every person at Hogwarts,” she had said dismissively, tone distracted – distracted but self-assured. That was her. Always somehow somewhere else. Always aiming ahead.

That was how she approached about just anything. With dead calm confidence. With the belief that her blood was all that mattered, regardless of whether the rest was rotten. That was how she saw Minhyuk too. He was her precious heir, no matter how many times he'd messed up already.

She'd gone so far as to smile and pat Minhyuk's cheek. Something had been off about that nearly motherly stroke.

Minhyuk had felt himself lean in and take the leftover love as gladly as any other time.

So he was back. The trepidation gone, Minhyuk looked up. The castle looked unchanged against the autumn sky. Smoke-grey, the building towered above the grounds and the lovely lake, its reflection turning the surface steely.

It was a little bit of a slap – to realize that he was home at last, and that _this_ was his home.

Hunger led him inside. But it wasn't the Slytherin common room he sought first, nor his favourite hiding places scattered all around Hogwarts. He sought a face in the sea of other faces. Sought the well-known softness he'd forgone but never forgotten. The smile that never smiled at him, but when it was there, it shattered everything Minhyuk had been, was, and would be.

It was a futile search, at least in the very beginning. There were just too many faces to screen through. Most of them didn't even ring a bell with Minhyuk. When had this familiar place become so unfamiliar? When had the people?

Minhyuk didn't spot Hyungwon at the Start-of-Term Feast. The Great Hall burst with voices and movements, making it impossible to single the boy out. The Gryffindor table lay too far from the Slytherin table, overflowing with seventh years who all could've been Hyungwon if Minhyuk squinted.

Deciding not to try anymore, Minhyuk ate his dinner in silence, the tightness in his stomach an almost welcome thing. It was unpleasant, the sensation, but it told him that he still had something he looked forward to. Someone he wished to see.

Hyungwon didn't wish to see _him_ , of course, but that was nothing new.

They didn't meet on the first day of school. They didn't meet the second day either. The first joint class their houses had together came in the middle of the week. By that time, Minhyuk had already caught a couple of glimpses of Hyungwon in the corridors.

He'd seen Hyungwon horse around with that Jooheon kid in between classes. He'd seen him cross the school grounds. He'd seen him wear a silly beret on a chillier day, a big and pale pearl dangling from it. And so when they ended up in the same classroom and looked up at the same time, Minhyuk wasn't struck by how hollowed Hyungwon's cheeks had become, or how tall he'd gotten. How handsome.

Hard-looking.

He wasn't struck by any of it – but by the twitch of Hyungwon's mouth that ate right through him. The slight recoil of limbs. Hyungwon measured him up and down, frowning without a word, trying to somehow figure out how Minhyuk out of all people fit here when he was supposed to be gone for good. Gone, and graduated, and a Death Eater.

It was finally there. The verdict Minhyuk had tried to avoid time and time again when he wouldn't as much as glance Hyungwon in the eyes.

Minhyuk didn't try to look away this time, or any time after that.

Whether he was close or far, he always got into Hyungwon's face one way or another. He'd made it his personal mission to annoy at least a single word out of Hyungwon; to tear down the iron curtain that Minhyuk himself had hung there first.

He sat nearby when they shared classes. When their teams trained together, he circled the hooped goal posts Hyungwon guarded, never straying too far and flying back right away. In the library, Minhyuk dumped his books down with a loud thud in the same corner where Hyungwon liked to study.

He confessed over and over, speaking with his eyes whenever Hyungwon deigned to turn to him.

And when that didn't work, Minhyuk began to speak with his mouth. He rambled about Kihyun and Hoseok and gay marriage and mésalliances. About the funny faces Hyungwon pulled when he was displeased or tired. He constantly asked questions that nobody answered. What's up yours? Can't you speak? Why aren't you in contact with Hyunwoo anymore? Troubles in paradise? He laughed at his own joke and went on.

Nothing.

More often than anything else, he criticized Hyungwon's saves and lunges after each match, his advices as unsolicited as the famed Muggle dick pics.

Nothing.

He actually _sent_ Hyungwon a dick pic. It moved.

When Hyungwon finally opened his mouth, he burned Minhyuk's tongue to a crisp.

“Are you still here?”

His voice hadn't lost its soft, sleepy quality, but it had become honed. Sharper. Just a tad – just enough to let everyone know it wasn't wise to wake this sleeping little lion man. There was something like self-preservation in his voice when he spoke; a deep knowledge of what it meant to hurt and to _be_ hurt. A thorn that Minhyuk had never noticed before.

Wavering, Minhyuk smirked a shallow smirk.

Yeah. He was still here, as out of place as ever. Still a student at his age. Still a Slytherin although he didn't share their beliefs. A surplus person.

Still in goddamn love with someone who'd hoped to have gotten rid of him.

Not loveless, but unloved all the same.

Minhyuk forced his fake smirk into an even faker smile.

“Of course,” he said thickly. “I couldn't leave you like your loverboy did.”

The cold war they'd led until that point turned into a regular war that day.

 

Hyungwon had once read that not all fireflies light up.

He didn't know the science behind it and even thought he had known it once, he'd forgotten it all by now. He remembered reading about the reason, but the reason itself kept slipping off the tip of his tongue. He tried and tried and recalled the smell of his father's book collection and the crisp, sheeny-shiny cover of a Muggle magazine on coastal science. There'd been an article about bioluminescence and it had gone from beautiful lit up beaches to basics, like fireflies.

The thing about Muggles was, they considered fireflies magical only when there was no greater comparison; and Hyungwon guessed that the poor bugs paled next to neon blue, blooming algae.

His sight slightly blurry, he looked outside the window to see a swarm of fireflies sloshing from side to side, glimmering like gold-flecked dust dancing away the night. Their bodies parted and merged. Sank and rose. One by one. In a cloud. They shone so bright.

If Hyungwon was one of them, he'd be the kind that doesn't light up.

The whole evening, he'd been put out. Like a candle. Like a bonfire after the party had already ended. He couldn't help it. The air was hot, the talk slow and sad, and the saddest parts came when the guys tried to pretend that this wasn't a goodbye and that tonight they had no time for sadness. He couldn't help it, and he thought of Hyunwoo's shy but happy eye smile when the boys had first teased him about his “cougar” of a future wife.

He couldn't help it, and neither could the alcohol.

Funny, how with all that Firewhisky running through him, there wasn't a single flicker of fire within him. Not a single spark.

Laying his head to the side to stare at Kihyun and Hoseok in their little loveseat, Hyungwon fed off the soft light coming out of Kihyun's eyes as the small boy gazed at Hoseok. Hyungwon fed off those whispers. Forget fireflies. This was the neon blue beach kind of light.

Hyungwon wasn't jealous. Jealousy wasn't in his vocabulary; it wasn't in his nature. Watching Kihyun and Hoseok in that seat, grabbing on to each other because this was their last time seeing each other until Kihyun was out of school, Hyungwon sensed a deep-rooted regret settle in between his bones instead. Regret and pity.

They had it worse. They actually had something and someone to lose.

Hyungwon could've never lost Hyunwoo because he'd never had him. Never would.

And there was something calming about it. Something sure.

Hyungwon sat there and listened – hungered – the strange thoughts which belonged to Kihyun and overpowered his own soothing him because there it was. The love. The love that not even he could claim to feel. The humble and human thing whose existence Hyungwon questioned at times even though he knew that he was _in_ love.

How could Kihyun ever bear it? The heart-deep sort of love? Even as a second-hand emotion lived through Kihyun, it seemed too strong to Hyungwon.

A sensation akin to breeze passed over him and cooled him down. A scoff. A scoff?

He followed the soft sound and locked eyes with Minhyuk.

Oh. Yeah. He was still here.

Hyungwon put his head back on the backrest. Simmering, Minhyuk's thoughts turned from murmurs to a louder stream of consciousness. It would have been nice if the volume went hand in hand with clarity.

The chaos in Minhyuk's mind rose like a windstorm. The noise that came back whenever Hyungwon got tipsy ever since he'd split his skull arrived on time as always, turning his own thoughts to secondary; to slush.

He wished he'd never learned how to read minds.

He wished he could read them better.

Minhyuk's was so _full_. His thoughts flowed out out out, pouring so thick that Hyungwon couldn't see the brim.

The boy blinked, a bit uneven, his gaze growing dark. Growing awkward with all the unsaid things it held. Minhyuk was smashed. His brain stormed as he observed Hyungwon's face.

And Hyungwon was tired all of a sudden. Tired of the clatter in his head. Tired of other people's pain. Tired of hearing Kihyun's thoughts even after he'd turned away. Were they Kihyun's thoughts, though, or did Hyungwon just hear him talk? But how come it sounded like Kihyun had two voices?

The love and longing went ocean-loud in Hyungwon's ears. The lust.

The soul-clenching terror of being left alone after letting someone in.

Kihyun. Last night.

Minhyuk. Last night.

It all merged together. It all merged.

Hyungwon didn't know which one of the Slytherins he was tuned to anymore. Whose voice it was that begged to belong. He heard _both_ voices, one stronger than the other, layering over each other without a clash because they were saying the same.

_I want to be with you. I want to be with you tonight. Names mean nothing. What do you see there? I want to be with you. I'm leaving. I'm leaving, are you glad? I'm glad. I'm not. Names mean nothing. Tonight I want –_

“Okay,” said Hyungwon.

A second later, it occurred to him what he'd just agreed to. It hit him with the sheerest clarity.

It hit him good.

He'd been put out the whole evening. But why _be_ put out when he _could_ put out. That was how the kids his age called it, wasn't it? Putting out.

Now he'd appreciate if someone could read _his_ thoughts because that pun was glorious. At least to a very boozed-up Hyungwon it seemed so.

Almost as glorious as the idea of a Pureblood aching to hold a half-blood.

Hyungwon didn't consider sex sacred. He knew and was friends with too many people who fucked for fun to still hold on to some kind of moral high ground. Sex was sex – a fumble of hands and tongues and genitals. He'd heard enough to lose the child-like awe with which he used to think about being with someone _like that_. He'd heard how awkward it could be, how underwhelming. How great.

He'd heard just about everything, and the rest he'd read in forbidden books and Muggle manhwas. So, sex was sex, and that was it.

_First_ sex should have been more significant for him – could have been, had he ever dreamed of it being with Hyunwoo. But Hyungwon hadn't, because Hyunwoo wasn't like that, wasn't like him. When Hyungwon looked at Hyunwoo, he felt things; but he didn't feel them in his cock, for fuck's sake. Being friends was okay. Being the person Hyunwoo sometimes thought of – was okay. It was all he needed. Hyungwon just took all the affection he could without feeling filthy and carried on. As long as Hyunwoo was glad to have him around, it was fine.

It was okay.

He realized Minhyuk was staring at him.

“Okay?” the Slytherin asked. A pity he didn't talk more often. He looked all sharp, but sounded all silken.

“Yeah,” said Hyungwon. “Okay.”

“Okay to what?”

“Everything. Everything you just thought.”

“I thought of a lot of things.”

_I have to tell you. I swear I'm not that. I'm not that. I want – you have to know – I want – I – you – please, can you hear – I want –_

_I'm going. I'm going. I want to tell you._

_You._

_You._

_You are._

Wanted, said Hyungwon to himself. Lit up.

He got up.

It was dark.

 

Hyungwon woke up with a hand holding his ass and someone's breath gone sour overnight fanning his neck. His head was one pulsing shard of glass. Dealing with hangovers wasn't one of Hyungwon's strong suit.

Dealing with sleeping Slytherins who clung to his back and clasped his ass cheek wasn't Hyungwon's strong suit either. Not that it mattered. He was too spent to move. He remained placid in place until somebody else woke up and shook them all awake.

Hyungwon should've been surprised that there were four people in the bedroom, but he wasn't. He'd been half-awake when Kihyun and Hoseok had barged in the night before. Had felt Minhyuk's cock go stiffer against him for a short while.

Yawning and slow, the guys all sort of shared a look and burst into soft snorts. None of them seemed terribly shy to wake up like this: gross and with sticky skin. They sat and lay and stood there all naked, but maybe that was it. They were all too naked to be shy anymore.

Minhyuk sat up with a groan, rubbing his face. His forehead was a whole ocean, creasing and crinkling as he recalled everything. He gave another groan before he closed himself off in one of his silences again.

Wiping his thighs, Hyungwon reminded himself that this guy before him knew no middle ground. Either he roared, or he was like a grave.

This time, he _looked_ grave. He glanced up at Hyungwon once, as if searching to see whether he'd survived yesterday, and then he turned away and got out of bed on the opposite side of it. He padded around the room on skinny legs, his shoulders and back broad but paler than his face, drained of sun.

Hyungwon regarded him for awhile.

Silence he was used to and could chalk it up to Minhyuk's sense of superiority. (Sure, Kihyun had sworn over and over again that Minhyuk didn't believe in what other Slytherins believed, and that he wasn't an ass, he just acted like one. And Hyungwon could testify to that now, to a degree. But acting like an ass and being an ass had the same outcome, so it didn't matter much in the end.)

Hyungwon had no idea what to make of Minhyuk's small movements and small good mornings and small glances, though. That was unusual for the prideful Pureblood.

He probably felt a bit bad.

He'd tried to play nice yesterday. He'd done everything a regular, run-of-the-mill good guy would do. He'd even pulled the love card.

It sounded a little silly in the morning. In daylight. Because in daylight, it didn't sound all that nice anymore; it sounded like a lie.

A white lie.

Minhyuk must have remembered saying it – saying it for the sake of fucking – and that was why he still looked so naked even when he'd put on his underwear. Hyungwon pulled on his socks, ruminating over the theory. Yeah. That would explain the jittery jerks of limbs. The shade of shame in Minhyuk's face as he reeled around the room, hunched, hunting for clothes.

Hyungwon watched him go to and fro with lukewarm fondness. Seeing Minhyuk so out of his element brought the boy down from his high horse in a way. The Slytherin was human after all. It was good to know, Hyungwon reckoned.

He could've ended up worse. Sober and tense and with someone he loved, but who didn't love him back. He could've done it with a friend only to ruin their friendship forever. He could've gone to bed with a guy who didn't care to make him come.

Hyungwon stretched and pulled his shirt over his head. He put on his pants next. Halting, he noticed something bizarre. He didn't hurt. He'd heard it was supposed to hurt the first time.

Yeah. Could've ended up worse.

 

The summer of 1993 came and went in a heartbeat. The suburbs where Hyungwon lived sparkled in the sun day by day, lively, rainless, without a hint of dark in the sky that would speak either of autumns or wars.

Hyungwon sent couple of letters to Hyunwoo and got a couple back, one from Tbilisi and one from Yerevan. Hyungwon had to rummage through his father's books to pinpoint the cities on a faded, dust-veiled map. As strange as it was, the borders that lay between him and Hyunwoo did nothing to the distance that had already been there. Hyunwoo had always been unreachable, one way or the other.

Now that he was truly out of reach, Hyungwon could think again. Of unpleasant things. Of pleasant things. Just think. He didn't have to feel all the time. He didn't have to keep longing.

_Longing_ .

The word stung on his tongue.

He wasn't quite free of that one yet, was he? He still longed too much. For things to stay the same. For Hogwarts to always welcome him and for Voldemort to fucking wait until Hyungwon was an old man, and for his father to find a steady job and keep it so his mother wouldn't have to earn money for two grown men. He longed to have his head back, back for himself.

He got drunk a couple of times over the summer, testing the waters, seeing how far he had to go in order not to simply hear other people's thoughts, but to understand them. To recognize memories from wishes and wishes from fears.

It had done little good. Instead of learning to somehow curate the “ability” he'd gained, his alcohol tolerance had risen and he couldn't really read anyone's mind anymore unless he got absolutely, floor-lickingly wasted; and when he did that, he didn't remember what he'd heard the night before.

For all the wasted effort, Hyungwon considered the experiment a success. He hadn't managed to control the problem or even find the root of it, but he'd made it smaller.

That was enough.

He never once mentioned his condition to his parents. His dad would just get upset and his mom... curious.

She'd find the solution or break Hyungwon's mind trying, he knew. But Hyungwon would rather not risk opening his mind to the scrutiny. It was terrifying enough to scrutinize other people's minds sometimes.

He could live like this. Really. It all could have been worse, so why take chances.

Maybe he was an underachiever like everybody told him, unlike his overachiever of a dad or his actually successful mom.

And maybe he just wanted to hear some things again, and for that he needed the ability intact; even if he remembered very little afterwards.

Remembering was becoming tougher and tougher anyway. It had been bad since the accident, but because Hyungwon didn't belong amongst those kids who would stay at the top of the class, nobody really noticed. His teachers didn't expect him to excel, just to do well, and he was still able to do that. When he would occasionally fail or forget something – usually his homework – the teachers would turn a blind eye because, well, this was the soon-to-be Gryffindor Keeper. He was a busy kid. A kid who never caused problems.

A Gryffindor.

They would let it slide and Hyungwon would go on.

He trained his memory over the summer – memorizing the places Hyunwoo and his fiancée had gone to on their pre-wedding honeymoon – listing names of seeds and plants his father needed to extend the greenhouse – muttering keywords from History of Magic.

Similar to his _other_ issue, Hyungwon hadn't exactly succeeded. He'd just made the problem smaller. He couldn't say whether the greatest Goblin Rebellion took place in 1612 or 1752, but he knew that Yerevan bordered with the Hrazdan River and that it was renowned for baklava (which tasted “lovely” with brewed coffee, according to Hyunwoo).

He remembered random things at random times. Names of foreign landmarks and lakes. What soil was the best for growing snowdrops. How Minhyuk's mouth tasted.

He remembered feeling lighted up and glowing like a true Gryffindor for the first time in his life.

 

Over the years, Hyungwon had gotten used to being the odd one out amongst his classmates. He wasn't disliked or particularly overlooked, he knew that. (“Of course they don't dislike you. You're too good-looking for that,” Hoseok had teased him.) Though just like in other aspects of his life, Hyungwon went through his days on autopilot, flowing forward at a slower pace than his peers and focusing on getting up in the morning. While other kids flocker together, Hyungwon kept to himself without much care for friendships that were too tedious to maintain. He liked being around people. He just didn't dislike being on his own.

The best bonds he'd formed at Hogwarts, he'd formed with people above or below his grade. Keeping to himself in class provided him enough solitude without feeling lonely.

When Hyunwoo and Hoseok had gone, Hyungwon felt the void they'd left behind, but at the same time he was ready for it. He missed them, but in a way he'd been missing them the entire summer and the months before that. Their absence didn't touch him, however unkind that sounded, because he'd been preparing himself for it.

Hyungwon returned to Hogwarts to find a void of different kind. He should have known, actually. Minhyuk had told him. He'd told him, but Hyungwon took those thoughts as much less serious. “Last night before the break,” maybe. “Last night before the war.” Either of those. Both.

He had been wrong, of course.

It took him ages to register that Minhyuk had switched schools.

Hyungwon met up with Kihyun once or twice over the first few weeks of the new term. The lanky shadow that would normally hang nearby with his sullen silence was nowhere to be seen, and Hyungwon didn't think anything of it. He expected to hear or see Minhyuk sooner or later, doing his Minhyuk things. Shrieking while sliding down the stairs. Setting off small fireworks by the lake. Fooling younger kids who trusted his friendly face and took part in Minhyuk's pranks and schemes without even knowing about it. Being loud as always when he wasn't too proud to talk to people who were below him.

The silence lasted, though, and no shadow appeared at Kihyun's side even a month into the term.

So Hyungwon asked.

Kihyun gave him a look – a startled little look, almost on the verge of disbelief – and Hyungwon got his reply. A reply he wasn't ready for.

“You didn't know either?” asked Kihyun, careful.

“How would I know?”

“Well, the two of you...” Kihyun paused, as etiquette dictated it.

“That doesn't mean much, though, does it? If he didn't tell anything to his best friend, why would he bother with me? We were never friends,” Hyungwon reminded him.

But he'd been willing to.

He'd been willing to, because he sometimes heard it again; off-tune, hazy; _I'm not like them, I'm not, I'm, I'm, you're – I tried, I tried so bad, I tried to save – I want –_

Those had been all lies in the end. Not just the love talk part.

All of it.

Minhyuk had gone to Durmstrang and each and every single one of his silences had gained a proper meaning by now.

Hyungwon stopped hanging out with Kihyun before the school year was over.

 

His parents called him passive sometimes. His teachers called him pliant.

And he was, Hyungwon supposed. He was both of these. Sometimes.

At other times, he could nurse thorns in his flesh without really realizing it, keeping them wedged there for years, remembering all the little hurts that seemed worse in hindsight; because in hindsight, he knew how he could have avoided them.

One of those thorns came alive and split Hyungwon's side open when he got to school as a seventh year and saw Lee Minhyuk in the Charms classroom. Yeah. Some things seemed worse in hindsight, and trusting and sleeping with a dark wizard from Durmstrang definitely belonged on the list.

Hyungwon swallowed a “Hi” and stared.

The remnants of boy-like roundness that had framed Minhyuk's face before the summer of 1993 had given way to cruelly carved curves and creases. His cheekbones sat higher and angled out. He was _all_ angles – from his brow bones to shoulders to those knuckled hands that had held Hyungwon's thighs together.

In hindsight, Hyungwon really couldn't have chosen worse.

That it had been _his_ choice stung the worst.

How lifeless did Hyungwon have to be, how starved, to believe the first person who claimed to see some life and light in him? How dead did he have to be to feel fleeting fondness for someone who'd died ages ago?

The one time Hyungwon wished his memory to take a moment of his life away, it didn't.

 

“Seen this?”

Looking up from a pile of hand-drawn Quidditch strategies and maps, Hyungwon sized Minhyuk up and down. The Slytherin gazed back at him with intensity that could've thrown off anyone who wasn't Hyungwon.

People called him passive, and so he passively took the wedding invitation Minhyuk was handing him and glossed over the gilded ink. He turned the card in his fingers and handed it back, offering the opposite corner to Minhyuk.

“Yes. This morning.”

“Must be fucky,” said Minhyuk, “to be a guest at Hyunwoo's wedding.”

Hyungwon regarded him without a shred of care.

“Why?”

Minhyuk shrugged. The tension in his face eased up a little. He could've convinced Hyungwon that he was just a boy.

“I would have thought that seeing the love of your life get married to someone else must hurt like a bitch. Doesn't it?”

“I don't know.” Scooping the plans and maps into his backpack and crumpling them, Hyungwon stood up. His sides felt thorny again. He threw the backpack over his shoulder, and looked at Minhyuk's shoulder, and remembered. Remembered the lies and remembered forgiving them for a moment. The thorn dug deeper. “You tell me when I invite you.”

Leaving Minhyuk stand there like a statue of salt, Hyungwon walked out of the library.

 

“Hey, Chae!”

Hyungwon didn't bother to whirl back and seek the source of the voice because he knew that voice and he would be happy never to hear it again. The Great Hall burst in its seams. The Slytherin table still cheered for the Quidditch team, hours after the match had been over, for crushing Gryffindor 140:60.

Sensing Minhyuk's footsteps quicken behind him, Hyungwon took a longer route and circled the whole Gryffindor table to avoid him. The staff table towered only a few feet to the left. Naturally, it had been naïve to think that Minhyuk would back off just because the teachers sat near. He jogged past Hyungwon and grinned that cold grin which distorted his eyes.

“Chae.”

“You're in my way.”

“Couldn't say the same about you this afternoon. What's up with you? I got at least six Quaffles past you.”

“That's because you cheated.”

“Oh, baby,” said Minhyuk, pretending to coo, “I would never cheat on you.”

Hyungwon was worn after the match, and in low spirits, and his stomach felt too heavy because he'd eaten more than he usually did. He stopped, noting that Minhyuk did too. For a minute, he did very little besides glare. The more tired he got, the more intense Minhyuk looked.

As any other child, Hyungwon had promised his dad that he wouldn't swear because swearing was ugly and only ugly people did it.

He guessed Hoseok had been wrong.

“Fuck you,” said Hyungwon, and it didn't make him feel any better, but it didn't make him feel any worse.

Minhyuk smiled.

“I thought I already did.”

As any other child, Hyungwon had also promised his dad that he wouldn't fight.

He lurched forward.

 

Hyungwon fixed his split lip after the headmaster had let him and his parents go. Minhyuk wore the bruise on his broken nose like a badge of honour until it healed on its own.

After they graduated, Hyungwon went national and Minhyuk played for a local team for four years

They didn't meet again until Minhyuk joined Puddlemere United.

 


	10. X.

_2002_

The Veritaserum had worn off. Hyungwon didn't reach for the vial. Didn't uncap it. Didn't pour more softly smoking droplets on Minhyuk's tongue even though he knew Minhyuk would open his mouth willingly. And why wouldn't he. At this point, there was nothing to hold back.

He'd said it all.

From the moment he was sixteen until this one, he'd bared it. Ten years. Ten years that Hyungwon held in his hands now, weaving through the months and days of Minhyuk's memories as though they were material threads of life, slipping through his crippled fingers like a lover's hair, or like the pages of a calendar.

He could see Minhyuk back when he was sixteen, with that unripe, awkwardly thin body. That already aged and angled face which could befriend anyone and yet kept everyone at bay.

He could see him at seventeen, lost, and lit up by fireflies. He could hear him say that _I love you_ again, with such clarity that only an unspoken thought could have. Heard himself say _Don't_ out loud.

He could see Minhyuk lose his sisters, two women Hyungwon hadn't even known had once existed, breathed, and shared this man's name. He could also see the father who'd sacrificed his reputation and conscience for his only son, as though both their lives were nothing but commodities on the black market.

He could see it all fall into place.

His memories scattered back from shards and ashes to take a clear shape, rising from ruins into a perfect picture – from black to light – from a room full of mirrors where he couldn't see the truth to a single mirror placed before him. And he, he stood sharply lit in front of it.

Hyungwon groped for the vial. Still didn't uncap it. Still didn't do anything.

All he needed was to busy his hands.

“You tortured Im Jaebum because he attacked you and your father... and because he tore the staircase down under me,” recapitulated Hyungwon, one blunt nail scraping the tight space between the vial's neck and cap. “You were avenging me.”

“That sounds way too noble,” replied Minhyuk, light, though the lightness couldn't be further from his usual tone. It wasn't his irony, or detachment, or self-defense. It was simply his youth seeping back and taking some weight off his voice. “I don't think I thought of it as avenging you. I just loved you.”

Hyungwon willed his eyes to stay open. Once he turned away, once he lowered his eyelids, it would be over. He blinked a lot.

“You've always had weird ways of showing it.”

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

 

_1999_

Ten minutes had passed since Kihyun had told him he would be moving out by the end of the month. Understandably, Hyungwon still hadn't digested the information.

Sure, they weren't lovers. They weren't even friends, in the right sense of the word. They fucked. Hyungwon offered Kihyun a roof over his head while his family's property had been confiscated by the Ministry. Kihyun cared for Hyungwon in every conceivable way, like he was several people in one person and Hyungwon was his only responsibility.

Despite that, they'd grown together, so Hyungwon hadn't truly considered him leaving. Not anytime soon, in the least.

The ten minutes following Kihyun's statement were spent nodding like he understood, walking, and overall pretending to do things, _any_ thing, although Hyungwon couldn't focus on the objects around him. Finally, he stopped. He put down whatever he was holding. Ceased doing whatever he was doing to appease Kihyun's inquisitive gaze.

He turned to Kihyun.

“Why, though?”

Kihyun looked like he'd been expecting the question. Strangely, he didn't have an answer ready. His narrow shoulders rose and fell in an imitation of a shrug. Neither of them was fooled. Kihyun wasn't a laid-back person. Making decisions out of the blue wasn't one of his habits.

Picking up whatever object he'd just put down, Hyungwon found himself in the middle of the living room with an empty watering can in his clutch, and no plants to water.

“Is Hoseok coming back?” tried Hyungwon, grasping for a reasonable motive.

“No.” Kihyun's voice dropped. “Not yet. And he won't be, for a while.”

Hyungwon had thought as much. Becoming an Auror could take years, and it usually did. Stuck in what the outsiders called “the secret area,” he Aurors-to-be couldn't leave the place during their training. They weren't allowed to meet anyone from the outside. Not even their families. A fiancé didn't stand a chance, which was why Kihyun hadn't seen Hoseok since the end of the war. Their engagement on hold, and their relationship open so Hoseok could have somebody on the inside and Kihyun someone on the outside, the two of them were as good as split for the time being. That was, until Hoseok came out of the training with a shining badge on his chest.

Hoseok deserved the chance to become someone. He'd been waiting for the opportunity throughout the whole war _and_ the years preceding it, when no Muggleborns were welcome at the gates of the corrupt Ministry.

Now Kihyun was waiting for him to be back. Had been waiting for almost a year. In what must have been a twisted way of thinking, Hyungwon had counted on Kihyun staying with him until then.

Hyungwon put the watering can down again.

“Are you going because you finally got your family's house back?” he asked, entertaining the theory for a second.

“No,” said Kihyun. “That's not it either.”

Silence.

Hyungwon picked up the water can and scrambled to fill it with water.

Kihyun moved out soon. Some time after, Hyungwon read in the newspaper that Lee Minhyuk had resumed his spot in Puddlemere United after his “post-war leave.” 

 

__2002_ _

“So that's it,” said Hyungwon, dull. “You did it because of me.”

His mind was the view inside a kaleidoscope, with a mosaic of shapes going from changing to unchanging, like when the spectator grows tired and stops twisting the tube. What had lurked dormant, or hidden, or buried since the battle, had blossomed to the surface. Spreading and tightening at the same time. Uncoiling, but coming together to create a bridge over the dark scar across his memory.

“A lot of the things I've done, I've done because of you,” said Minhyuk quietly. “A lot of stupid things, I'll admit.”

“You call this stupid? Torturing a person?”

“Well, it wasn't smart, was it.”

The edge to his words was back, less Slytherin and more Minhyuk. Hyungwon stared at him. Staring kept his eyes dried out and his core closed.

“It didn't occur to you that you would pay for this one day?” inquired Hyungwon.

“Wanna hear the truth? I don't know if it crossed my mind at all. I didn't imagine that I would have to face this. To me, what I did was justified. What I did was _justice_. When Jaebum bounced back after the battle and emigrated, I reckoned he was running away from what he's done to you. He stayed abroad for so long, even after the first wave of Death Eaters started to come back with big excuses and even bigger alibis, that I assumed he knew full fucking well what he's done. That _he'd_ crossed the line. Not me. Not you.” Tick. Tick. Tick. “But suddenly he's back when the Ministry is handing out medals.”

The membranous layer of his memories quivered again. Hyungwon went over Minhyuk's response in a motionless chase to pinpoint the element that seemed to him so _off_ ; the trigger that set his brain racing all over again. Over the course of the interrogations, Hyungwon had gotten so used to second-guessing every shift in Minhyuk's tone, every wrongly worded sentence, that he found the reason for his anxiety soon enough.

“What do you mean, not me?”

The magical shackles slicing across Minhyuk's chest and middle silvered in the shadows as he physically winced – or halted. One of the two. Whether it was a movement or lack thereof, Hyungwon clocked the change.

Minhyuk had taught him well, after all.

“I didn't mean anything by that,” said Minhyuk.

“This is the first lie you've told ever since they brought you here. Isn't it?”

No answer.

“Should I feed you some more?” asked Hyungwon, lifting the vial. The Veritaserum glimmered in its glass cage like an extremely small, all-knowing entity that lay in waiting, collecting its strength to bring the world down and turn everyone's reality inside out once it was released. An idea glimmered in Hyungwon's head just as clearly. “Or should I drink it? It should be powerful enough to fill in the rest of the blank spaces. I still don't remember bits and pieces, but this could help.”

“No –”

Minhyuk thrashed in the chair. The chains wrought of light tightened around him as he leaned forward, forearms falling on top of the desk and grinding in place in an attempt to reach out. He sank his teeth into his bottom lip. Gnawed at it. The soft, dry skin teemed and swarmed as he bit into it.

It seemed that apart from his lip, there was no life within him. He stilled where he was, unable to move. To touch. He glanced at the dainty bottle in Hyungwon's grip.

The whole thing terrified Hyungwon.

He stared, and this time his lashes grew thick with wetness.

He rasped.

“Minhyuk, what did I do?”

 

_1999_

The last time he'd seen Kihyun, it was early summer of 1994. Kihyun had been a runt dressed in tailored robes which hung on him a little too large. A touch of chub had filled his cheeks. He'd been a bright boy, set on making Hoseok his husband one day.

This Kihyun had a partly healed burn on his wrist, untended by magic, and pinched, handsome features. He hadn't grown much taller, only more refined. With every neatly packaged portion of politeness he addressed to Minhyuk, he put up another layer of separation between them, as though they hadn't been the rare brand of water which was thicker than blood once.

The Muggle café was quiet, if crowded. As inanimate as the interior around them – the Art Nouveau furniture and clashing modern collages on the walls – Kihyun spoke of the war, the weather, the flavour of the coffee. Of living with Hyungwon, since there was nobody else to offer him a home.

It was their first meeting after five years, the first time of them talking again; not since the battle, but since their sixth grade. Minhyuk felt each day of that micro-epoch stand where the table divided them, right between their neglected cups. It was Minhyuk's first day back in Britain.

He'd come back to learn that his best friend had fucked his last friend.

(Except Kihyun wasn't his best friend anymore, and Hyungwon had hardly ever been his friend to begin with. If Minhyuk had the opportunity to ask, Hyungwon would in all likelihood say that what they _used_ to be was teammates, nothing more, nothing less; and after the war, they weren't even that. He wasn't Minhyuk's friend. Not now. Not ever. What Hyungwon was, was neutral at best. His non-enemy, perhaps. That was the furthest they'd ever come. To not hating each other.

Probably.)

Minhyuk's mind reeled back. It returned to the small, subtly slipped detail.

They'd fucked.

In retrospect, Minhyuk wouldn't remember what it was that he said at that moment. A punchy “What the fuck, Ki,” maybe. A succinct “Fuck you,” because there was a charm in simplicity. A more pathetic response, like “How could you do this to me?” or “You know how I feel about him,” each of them terribly embarrassing to imagine leaving his lips. He would later hope it was the “Fuck you.” He was a simple man.

And hearts usually rupture in simple ways.

Kihyun remained his civil self, a light colour dusting the backs of his hands because his face was too drained to blush. He was too old to blush nowadays. Too controlled. And Minhyuk had become someone before whom he must control himself. He'd become a foreigner in the land of Kihyun's friendship.

“I thought you should know.”

“Should know what?” said Minhyuk. “That I turn my back for a few months and you start playing house with him, of all people?”

“He needed help. There was nobody else to take care of him, unless he wanted to depend on his parents.”

“And you helped,” intoned Minhyuk. “You took care of him.”

“Yes.”

“I wasn't aware that caretaking involved your cock.”

Kihyun took a gratuitous pause. He stirred his coffee. “I needed help too.”

There was a quip on the tip of Minhyuk's tongue. _You could have come to me if you were lonely_. But Kihyun couldn't have come to him at all, and the quickly arising reply had an even quicker death. He couldn't have gone to Minhyuk to kill loneliness or to talk about the trauma of losing everything and everyone, whether they were dead or alive. Because Minhyuk was one of the living who'd abandoned him. One of the lost ones.

For the second time when Hoseok was gone from Kihyun's life, so was Minhyuk. For the second time, they'd left Kihyun alone; Hoseok with a promise to come back, Minhyuk without notice. A sensation similar to regret, but emptier, like when you see your train already leaving the station after you've arrived at the last minute, congested where his tongue was supposed to be. It swelled up, clogging his mouth from the floor to the roof. Lacing his mucous membranes. His gums. Rolling towards the hole of his throat.

Thoughts rained down on him, miscarried midway.

“So you slept with him,” managed Minhyuk.

“Yes,” said Kihyun, the calmness grating. Unsettling. He was deep waters with a too-serene surface.

“Even though you're still engaged to Hoseok,” continued Minhyuk. He was beginning to try to make it hurt. He sat in his seat, watching himself spiral.

Kihyun stirred his coffee again. Two spins of the spoon. Counterclockwise.

“Hoseok is away.” He wiped the spoon with a paper napkin. “He's going to be away for a long while.” He put the spoon on the saucer with a gentle click. “He's going to be an Auror,” said Kihyun, with a sweet-sad pride. “He's free to do what he has to while he's lonely there too, you know. The training could take years.”

Minhyuk ignored his cup altogether, otherwise he would have to overthrow it. Break away its petite ear. Pour the coffee out. Step over the dregs. The split-second hunger for violence struck him as childish, and yet it was the most he'd felt since leaving Britain after Hogwarts had burned down. It brought him back to that night when he'd feared he would lose Hyungwon in yet another way.

“If you didn't give a shit about Hoseok, maybe you could've given some about me,” he rasped.

A second. A counterclockwise spin of the spoon.

“About you?” echoed Kihyun. He wiped the thing. He disposed of the tissue.

“Yes. About me. You could have chosen anyone. Anyone at all.”

“I couldn't. There wasn't anyone else. And Hyungwon needed me.”

“But I'm your best friend.”

Kihyun drank his coffee. “Best friends don't leave.”

A streetcar passed by the window. The earth shattered a little. The cups sang in the saucers.

Waiting for the shakes to cease, Kihyun stared at the streetcar as it rattled past the café with small huffs and chiming drowned out by the sounds of the the streetlife. When the vehicle turned the corner and the china calmed down, he inhaled.

“You were the family I chose, but I wasn't the family _you_ chose, Min. You disappeared for a whole year and you didn't bother to seek me out even after you got back. You disappeared again when the war was over, without a word. You don't get to play the victim here.” Collected, Kihyun slid his jacket off the backrest of his seat and threw it over his shoulders. He got up. “You were gone. Hoseok was gone. Hyungwon was the only one I could even _talk_ to.”

“You did more than talk.”

“You and I, we both fucked him, but I was upfront about what it meant. I told him what I wanted from him and he told me what he expected from me. Neither of us owes you anything, if that's what you're telling yourself. You can forget all you've done and pretend that I was the one who hurt you. Okay. I'll take it. But I never hurt him.” Unlike you, hung there unspoken.

Again, Minhyuk had a rich range of comebacks to choose from. Melodramatic _how could yous_ and pissed off _fuck yous_ that, in the end, wouldn't reek of melodrama any less. He deflated.

“What the fuck, Ki,” he quavered.

That slowed Kihyun down. Made him look up. But it was too late.

“What?” said Kihyun. “Are you even angry that I slept with him, or that I'm right?”

The truth was so hard and huge to swallow that he would have to unhinge his jaws to try.

The bitch came to get him after five years on the run, and seven years of silence.

Kihyun walked out. But not before placing a polite column of Muggle coins on the tabletop.

 

_2002_

“Minhyuk. Look at me. What have I done?”

“Nothing,” insisted Minhyuk. He thrashed in his chair again, bringing it to the table with a scrape of metal and a wail. He got so close that the edge of the table rammed into his torso and sliced at his robes, similar to the silver chains holding him in place. “You haven't _done_ anything. You just _heard_ him.”

“Heard who?” asked Hyungwon. His voice was wet. “Jaebum?”

“Yes. You heard him say – you heard his _thoughts_ – he followed me to finish me off. He was about to hex me. After he'd already tried to attack my father and me once. After he...” His gaze flowed down, to Hyungwon's crippled limb. Regaining his composure, Minhyuk glanced back up, offering himself to Hyungwon's scrutiny. “All you did was warn me that he was coming. You could hear him long before I even saw him.”

He'd leaned in so far that, if he wanted to, he could've easily mauled Hyungwon right there and then. There wasn't anyone to stop him.

“I don't remember it,” whispered Hyungwon.

“I know. I know that now.”

“What happened? How did it happen?”

“After you fainted, I carried you out of the castle. I got almost to the Great Hall when he caught up with us. I thought you were still unconscious, so I didn't understand what you were trying to say. I thought you were delirious. You started to cry and that's when I saw him –”

 

_1999_

When the Ministry returned the Lee family manor to him, ransacked and cleared out of anything valuable, there was nobody to live there with him. The graveyard of a house glistened even more pallid with no furniture to soften its sharp shades, all marble and silver and mirrors without frames.

Minhyuk walked in and pocketed the keys. His keys. Keys that had travelled from hand to hand as the Ministry workers did their job searching the rooms for incriminating evidence. They'd found a lot. Enough for Minhyuk to be the last one standing.

He slept in the unfurnished place with his clothes on and his wand ready.

He ate, though he had no idea what he was putting in his mouth.

Sometimes he tried to recall the months after the war. Summon the forgiving forest and fields of Austria, and the cities that looked like built from sugar, pulled out from another century altogether and placed amongst a tangle of industrial veins of railways and highways. Most of his efforts cost him hours of concentration with little to no result. He'd spent almost a year there, and yet the best he could do was picture Austria the way he'd seen it on postcards.

He'd been in limbo when abroad. He was still in limbo, a stranger in his own house, his own skin.

It went on for several weeks. He slept in his clothes, he ate whatever remained in the kitchens to eat. It went on, and on, and on.

It would have gone on forever if Hyunwoo hadn't contacted him.

His old spot in the team was still unoccupied, the letter said.

 

_2002_

“You know that feeling when you realize, for the first time ever, that you hate someone. Truly hate someone. That they've done something unforgivable. They've done something that neither you nor them can take back, so you can't forgive them even if you tried. When you hate someone like this, you don't care why they've done it. You don't care – because there is nothing that could excuse it. No amount of fear. No circumstances. You just hate them. And the word sounds so small when you say it. It's meaningless. It's so meaningless that you have to _do_ something. Because they've already done something to ruin you. To ruin _me_. He tried to attack _me_ , but _you_ ended up...”

Choking on the flow of words, Minhyuk breathed against the spark and shine of his shackles. The light grew strangling around him, the sheer tightness strong enough to halve him.

“It's always me,” he let out, the chains slicing at him. “Always me who hurts you, in any way I can. Even when I don't want to.”

His hands started to shake.

Watching the tremors reminded Hyungwon of a desperate deer dance. Minhyuk's fingers twitched, closing around air. Grasping onto something that wasn't there. Running from having nothing to hold.

Hyungwon forced himself to regard it all as secondary. His ache and Minhyuk's alike. Their memories, shared or not. They were an interrogator and a suspect. It didn't matter what _else_ they were, or had been. Or could have been.

He picked up the quill.

“Please, answer clearly. You used the Unforgivable Curse against Im Jaebum in self-defense, correct?” said Hyungwon thickly.

“Yes.”

The quill scratched.

“He bit off a chunk of his tongue. Did you know? He can't speak properly anymore.”

“What a pity.”

“He's basically disabled,” continued Hyungwon.

“Just like you. It's an eye for an eye.”

Quiet. “You shouldn't have done that.”

“I had to. I still would if I could. He destroyed you.”

“I'm not destroyed. I'm alive.”

“Your career is over, though.”

“That hardly matters. War is war.”

“It matters. You were... You were exceptional, okay? There's never going to be anyone else like you.”

“I wasn't that good.”

“You were good without even trying, Won.”

“I wasn't –”

“You were. You goddamn were. I either had to cheat, or work twice as hard as you to get half back.” The light bulb buzzed above. Minhyuk threw a distracted glance at it. “That's why I was so-so when I played against you, but I was better than anyone when I played _with_ you.”

Back to the case. Back to the case. Hyungwon repositioned the quill between the pads of his fingers. They slipped over the smooth shaft, sweaty.

“Would you have... done that... even if I'd been out of the equation?” He hesitated, then looked up from the file. “Would you still have tortured Jaebum if it hadn't been for the accident?”

“You call it an accident? He caused all of this –”

“Please, answer.”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

Ordering his thoughts, Minhyuk took a minute to respond. “I don't know. I probably wouldn't. I can't speak for my past self, but I mean what I'm saying now. I wouldn't have a reason to torture him to begin with, so I can't imagine myself doing it. I would have ruffled him a bit, alright. Given him a lesson for trying to fight me and then running. But that would be it.”

“Okay.” The quill scratched, scratched, scratched.

Grim, Minhyuk nodded to the vial of Veritaserum. “You can check, if you want.”

“I don't need to.”

Hyungwon finished writing.

 

_1999_

He heard that Kihyun had moved out of Hyungwon's place. Heard it in the locker room, or on the field, or somewhere, from someone. Hyungwon was still a topic amongst the players, Hyunwoo taking no offense to that because he knew that the team simply missed the old captain.

It was a sorry excuse for a locker room talk, when all they had to discuss was whether Hyungwon was alright and whether it was safe for him to live alone, “you know, because of his arm.”

“Maybe if it's you who writes to him, he will show up,” suggested Hyunwoo one day when he and Minhyuk were the last ones picking up their things after a rigorous practice, and Minhyuk had to hold his laughter.

But he did write to him. He sent an owl to Hyungwon later in the night, and never got an answer.

He sent another owl later into the season.

He learned what it was like to send letters to someone who was silent.

 

_2002_

Time was still.

Time was at its end.

Time was an empty watering can and Hyungwon carried it clutched to his chest in case he found anything to fill it with.

Minhyuk's hands leaned into Hyungwon's, looking dead despite the tremors. Bronzed, they lay there in a sort of half-shape.

“I'm not sure why I didn't finish him off. I suppose I was hoping the fucker would bleed to death by himself.”

“Or you hoped he would survive, somehow.”

Minhyuk's mouth grimaced. His eyes didn't smile to match the theme. “Look at you. An hour ago I was a killer. Now I'm suddenly a saviour, somewhere deep down.”

“You saved me. Twice.”

“And you saved me. Without you I wouldn't have known that Jaebum was after me again.”

“Why you, though? Why would he attack you of all people?”

“Because he thought what everybody thinks. I'm a Slytherin. A killer. A hateful bigot, and he's a Muggleborn.” A tight-lipped smile. Hyungwon watched it wilt. “But I only ever felt hate once in my life. When I saw you fall.”

 

 

Hyungwon turned off the timer. The chamber died its thousandth death, sinking into silence. When he put his hand back down, he put it in the same place as before. The back of his hand grazed Minhyuk's.

Gazing down, and then lifting his gaze, Minhyuk looked like during those times when he would confess to Hyungwon without words. His eyes softened at the corners even as the rest of him remained too intent, proud angles giving him airs while he begged, and loved, and bared himself to someone who couldn't hear.

“I really didn't know that you don't remember anything. I thought it was just rumours,” said Minhyuk in a murmur.

“Well. I remember now.”

“I'm... sorry I never said anything. It really didn't occur to me that you... I thought it was just your Hyungwon thing.”

“My Hyungwon thing?”

“Yeah. To let shit flow and go. It's what you always do.”

“Is it?” he remarked, thoughts swimming.

“At least that's what you used to do when it came to me.” When Hyungwon didn't say anything to that, Minhyuk continued, and for the first time in hours and days he sounded guarded. “I bullied you pretty bad when we were in school and you never said a word.”

“It wasn't that bad,” said Hyungwon to brush him off. They'd fought with fists and elbows that one time – but Hyungwon had started it. “You never touched me.”

“Oh, I touched you. But _that_ didn't touch you.”

Hyungwon flushed.

It had. It had lighted him up for that one night.

 

 

More minutes sank from present to past.

“I was so sure that...” began Minhyuk.

“That what?”

“That you still have the powers. Because I'd seen you use them during the battle. I went on thinking that you can read minds. That you'd read mine.”

“This is the first time that I actually know what you think,” replied Hyungwon. The skin around his eyes had tightened. It was warm.

“It feels strange,” said Minhyuk.

“Does it?”

“A little. It's like screaming into this deep cave and hearing no echo.”

“I'm the cave?”

“You are someone in the dark who refuses to scream back.” Minhyuk gave him a fraction of a smile. “But I'm glad that you can hear me. Even if it doesn't change anything.”

“It does. It changes some things.”

“What things?”

“For one, I finally know what happened.” To you. To us. “And I know I can trust you.”

Hyungwon sucked in a breath, the sniffing sound giving away more than he wished. He pulled back. The useless arm hanging by his side, he stacked the papers and files into one heap and scooped them with his left hand.

“All of this. All you've told me should be enough to get you out. This, and my memories.”

“What? You'll testify for me?”

“I have to, even if I didn't want to. I was there.”

“You could always lie. My word won't mean anything during this witch hunt, you know that. You could tell them that you don't remember a thing and they'll believe you. They'll put me behind bars.”

“But I do. You made me remember.”

“You wanted to serve me justice, though,” Minhyuk reminded him. “What happened to that plan?”

“Justice. Not injustice. I didn't have a reason to trust you when they first brought you here. I do now.”

Minhyuk finally withdrew as well. He didn't say a word as Hyungwon stood up and held the files under his healthy arm. Then, nobody moved. Tied up in that chair, Minhyuk squinted up into the light of the single light bulb shining from the ceiling.

“Are you going soft on this Slytherin?” he quipped. The squint made him appear shy, like he was addressing the light. “That's kind of sad, isn't it. Since it's so late. Why couldn't you have gone soft for me when we were younger?”

“Because you've always been a massive dickhead.”

They stared at each other. Minhyuk chuckled.

“Yeah. That I was.”

Hyungwon walked out of the room feeling like the day had already ended and his days had just begun.

 


	11. XI.

_2002_

Hyungwon had imagined that having his memories extracted would be similar to using a Pensieve. He had painted a glum picture inside his head of a silver bowl swimming with his silver thoughts threading together in a silver mist. Envisioned himself falling into it face-first to chase for the right memory. The memory that would save Minhyuk's life.

He'd imagined that rushing after the elusive pieces of the Battle of Hogwarts would be like rewinding a film reel back and forth. Speeding it up. Slowing it down. Tearing the celluloid in places where his mind was hazy.

It was anything but.

The process was simple, Changkyun had told him. So simple that the clarity of it scared Hyungwon worse than a chase through mist and maze. There, he could have pretended. He could have unseen things. Could have gotten lost in the landscape of his remembrance on purpose and block out the sad parts.

“Don't move now,” murmured Changkyun as he laid the precise tip of his wand against Hyungwon's temple.

His first instinct was to flinch. Dart away. Anything to protect himself.

It was in the nature of mankind to seek the truth, but to _want_ it only when it was pretty and noble and when it had a point. People wished to seek it – but not to _see_ it. Not unless it could change the future for the better.

The truth couldn't do much for Hyungwon besides rewrite everything he'd ever believed in and known. Rewrite him. Put a brand new cover on Minhyuk's name. All Hyungwon had already learned from Minhyuk, he would have to also accept as true once the procedure was done.

He closed his eyes.

“Go on,” he resigned himself to Changkyun's powers.

The tip of Changkyun's wand grew cold, the sensation numbing the outside and inside of Hyungwon's skin alike. A sharp black knife sliced into the gossamer of his mind and dissected just what it needed to dissect in a painless second.

What came after wasn't so painless.

Hyungwon shuddered as Changkyun drew the rushy string of his memories out and away from his temple. It had taken a clear shape – clear but changing constantly – going from a gooey cord of diaphanous shine to a curly cloud and back again. Changkyun focused with his whole face as he gently brought the wispy string towards a small vial, let it drip off the end of his wand, and capped the crystalline substance inside.

The vial sparkled so beautifully, it was hard to believe that it held his recollection of the battle. Of blood. Of Hyungwon crying until he choked because he could hear Jaebum's voice and because nobody could hear _him_. So that was the moment when he'd thought he was about to witness Minhyuk's death.

“Shh,” whispered Changkyun although Hyungwon hadn't made a sound. He leaned down to rub some warmth into Hyunwon's shoulders and temples. “You're fine, hyung. It's just the spell. It makes you feel a little cold, but you'll be back to normal in a minute.”

Hyungwon nodded to let Changkyun think that it was just that. He waited out the effervescent sort of brain freeze (skin freeze, soul freeze) until it had completely gone. It took a minute, like Changkyun had promised. The shakes and chills held onto him longer than the spell. Only when it all was washed away, and the fished-out memory was all that moved and shimmered in the room, Hyungwon collected himself to go.

He got up on unsteady legs. He said a quick goodbye to Changkyun, or tried to.

Kihyun was waiting outside the room.

“Need a hand?” he offered, watching Hyungwon sway from side to side with sharp eyes.

“No, thanks. I already have one.”

“Are you dizzy?”

“A little light-headed.”

“Thank you. For doing that.” Kihyun's earnest expression died down when Hyungwon turned to him, enough to erase a shadow of boyhood off it and bring back the Corporate Kihyun. He folded his hands in front of himself. “Thank you for clearing up his name.”

“It's not cleared yet.”

“It is to us.”

Right.

Hyungwon supposed that counted for something.

 

 

A month had passed in a blur – if a blur could last for several subsequent infinities and drag day by day, night by night, in a neverending hum of elevators and testimonies and timers. Hyungwon's daily routine had become a carousel that turned and turned and rushed ahead in a motion that didn't truly lead anywhere. His days were cyclic. Hectic, yet too long.

One whole branch of the Ministry of Magic had been working on Minhyuk's case, collecting data, scouring for more witnesses. There were none. Detectives drilled so deep down into Minhyuk's family tree that they'd uncovered long-buried skeletons and secrets connected to the past wizarding war, but nothing that would incriminate him personally. All those new facts had been the sins of his ancestors. Ironically, although the findings were damning to the reputation of Minhyuk's family as a whole, they cleared his name until it sparkled in the Daily Prophet headlines like new.

He'd gone from the man who may have committed a hate crime and mauled his Muggleborn classmate to a boy who'd kept himself pure despite how rotten his relatives were.

It was still somewhat of a wonder even to Hyungwon – how Minhyuk had managed to grow into himself when he'd been surrounded by the sheerest hate throughout his whole childhood, and then later on too, when the hate had been aimed at him by people who couldn't have brought themselves to trust him.

He'd been one of them. Understandably so.

He could still justify it to himself.

Regret was a strong word to describe what gripped him whenever he thought of all the _could have beens_ he had missed with Minhyuk. Hyungwon had never been one to nurture close friendships anyway, and he didn't think, not even in hindsight, that Minhyuk's feelings would have made any difference back when they were young. Not then.

It was the ten years that had Hyungwon so uprooted, or rather rooted to a single, constantly returning question. How could a person love someone for ten years without repose or a grain of affection back? How could a person love anything for ten years, really?

What was it like, to be loved for so long?

Hyungwon squirmed at the thought. He _had_ been loved for that long. Only he hadn't known. He hadn't known, and now the knowledge of it felt terribly unfamiliar and soul-stripping. As though he'd walked out of his home one day wearing a sort of protective film, but then someone had stopped him and peeled it off and said: Here. Now you're loved.

And you can't do anything about it.

Hyungwon had had little time to pore over what it meant in the past month – he'd _made_ himself had little to no time, working overtime, assembling materials for Minhyuk's trial to stay busy. Doing whatever was in his power to block out Kihyun's voice when he would talk about Minhyuk being moved from the Ministry cell to a slightly more luxurious custody of his own house, the Lee family manor functioning as his temporary prison. With the place charmed and an Auror patrolling the grounds at any given minute of the day, Minhyuk was as good as lost to the world for the time being.

Hyungwon tried not to think of how often the manor must have felt like a real prison to Minhyuk even before he'd been arrested.

After the blurry month came the trial.

 

 

The courtroom was a small place, dim from corner to corner. Crammed with a sea of newsmen flashing their outdated magical cameras and filling the already stuffy room with smoke. Bursting at the seams not only because the entire Puddlemere United team crowded it, but because Minhyuk's old Quidditch team, The Falmouth Falcons, thronged the narrow benches designated for viewers right beside them. The two rivals sat side by side as one, their serious grimaces upturned to the front of the courtroom.

Hyungwon's mom had come too, for whatever reason. She'd always had a soft spot for Minhyuk's “spirit,” it seemed. But, officially, she was there due to professional curiosity. She'd led and judged trials in Scotland throughout her whole career; it was only natural to come and take a look at how British war crime processes went.

_He won't have his own mother here_ , she'd mouthed Hyungwon's way when he'd thrown a surprised look at her.

He supposed that this wasn't the time to question anything anymore. The trial itself was already anticipated to be one of the strangest in the history. After all, it didn't happen daily for the lead investigator to find out halfway through his job that he could have been implicated too – or that he had the information essential for freeing his prisoner.

Changkyun was standing by the judge's bench, vials with the witnesses' memories clutched at his sides and ready to be revealed. Minhyuk sat a little to the left with his profile to the public, facing the judge. Across from him, Jaebum had the look of someone who was haunted and hunted and who smouldered with distaste towards those who'd cornered him. He was the only person in the room apart from Aurors allowed to wield his wand because he needed it to communicate. Two Aurors towered beside him and another one behind.

Minhyuk had the same entourage around him.

The judge talked loudly and dully. The cameras clicked. Someone in the audience must have been an ardent Quidditch fan because she yelled a marriage proposal at Minhyuk, repeating the offer as a pair of guards took her out. The judge grumbled for silence. Talked even more loudly and dully.

After he'd summarized the case and heard both sides, Jaebum claiming he'd been attacked, Minhyuk claiming to act in self-defense and defense, the judge called in the witnesses.

There was Kihyun, corroborating as one of the trusted Slytherins that Minhyuk had never joined the Dark Lord's side. There were two or three Hogwarts professors who had survived, talking about Minhyuk as a student.  _Oh, he would do what all boys did at his age, but no! By Merlin! He wouldn't hurt a fly!_ Hyungwon knew way too well that Minhyuk hadn't always been the easiest kid to deal with in class, but people forget the bad and sweeten the good.

More people passed by. People who'd been in the battle and seen Minhyuk march through the castle, never harming anyone in his way. There was Hyunwoo, sweet Hyunwoo, his Gryffindor halo all but absolving Minhyuk – because Gryffindors didn't mingle with Slytherins, ever; and when they did, it must have been because of the Slytherin's purity and not because of the Gryffindor's depravity.

Hyungwon was the last to go. He spoke shortly, skipping his experience with Minhyuk as a student altogether. He spoke only of the war. Of the battle. He ended his dead-voiced speech with a “He saved my life twice that night” and fell silent. The courtroom fell silent too. The Daily Prophet reporters stopped scribbling and lifted their heads to stare in disbelief.

The morsel he'd given them was too delicious not to bite into it. Chae Hyungwon, the Chae Hyungwon who had jailed dozens of criminals in the aftermath of war and who had made headlines because he'd been accused of a strong bias against the Slytherin House, defending a Death Eaters' son?

Their heads hung down again in unison and the scribbling started anew, even more furiously than before.

But what tipped the public irreversibly towards Minhyuk's side were the replayed memories.

Hyungwon sat with his best impenetrable expression as the whole courtroom watched him bleed, watched him raw, watched as Minhyuk's face got close and broken and begged for him in a foggy voice to wake up. It felt like being in the cinema, with the sound and screen fading along with Hyungwon's consciousness.

The silence deepened when Hyungwon's memory ended. Catching a wisp of silvery mist with the end of his wand, Changkyun gently scooped and stored it back into the vial.

Jaebum was white in his seat. His tongueless mouth prolapsed, hollowing as he struggled to speak and couldn't and spat out a sound that barely belonged to a person. He gripped his wand a waved it, writing his protests in the air in a clear line of light.

“The memory could have been faked,” read the words he'd written.

“It couldn't,” replied Changkyun calmly once the judge allowed him to speak. “What you just saw was an authentic memory of someone gradually losing their consciousness. It wasn't tempered with – it fades in places because the witness was severely hurt when the moment took place. It is possible to alter one's memories, of course. But this is not what that looks like. A manipulated memory will cut off abruptly, or it will become milky and hazy.”

The judge nodded. It wasn't common knowledge, but he'd overseen enough trials to know that Changkyun was telling the truth.

Jaebum grasped for straws. He waved his wand again.

“The whole thing is made up! Just replay that part when the victim says he can hear my thoughts! How can he claim something so silly?!” read the angry jumble of bright light that had spilled from the tip of Jaebum's wand.

Unwillingly, Hyungwon rose to his feet again and waited for his cue to speak.

“I once had the ability to read minds, Your Honour.”

“Yes, I remember reading that in your testimony, Mr Chae. However,” said the judge and closed one of the files he'd been leafing through, “you must understand that this is a very strange claim. Quite unusual even for witches and wizards. Clairvoyants are very rare. And nobody apart from Mr Lee can confirm your words, which in itself could be seen as suspect.”

“I'm not a clairvoyant, Your Honour. Nor was I when I still had the gift. You see, it wasn't a gift to begin with –”

Hyungwon talked longer this time. About his head injuries. About how his own thoughts would go haywire after a Quidditch accident when he was but a boy (a boy, again, saved by Minhyuk from a far worse fate). (The audience _aaah_ -ed when Hyungwon slipped the piece of information in.) He carried on to talk about how, every once in a while, even though he hadn't wanted to and even though it had scared him, he would hear people's thoughts.

“A peculiar condition,” admitted the judge. “Have you or the Mediwizards in the care of your case ever discovered what had caused it?”

“No, Your Honour. I have just always assumed that it had something to do with learning the Legilimens spell as a child.”

“Legilimens is an intricate and dangerous spell. Why would a child learn it?”

Hyungwon inhaled to answer him. But a noise at the back of the courtroom interrupted him. The judge looked past Hyungwon and motioned his hand as to give someone leeway to speak.

“I can answer that question, Your Honour,” said Hyungwon's mom.

It took everything in Hyungwon not to glance over his shoulder. He kept his composure even though the effort closed up his throat and the muscles in his neck hurt.

He didn't glance to the side either even though Minhyuk's eyes had been burning into him for the better part of his speech.

“Please,” said the judge, gesturing.

Hyungwon's mom was a tall woman. She could command attention and respect even in a room where her name was unknown; and it was rarely ever unknown. The cameras started with their vicious clicking and smoking, slicing the courtroom with an epileptic flood of flashes.

“Your Honour, you and I share the same profession. It is a honourable occupation, but since we are in the charge of securing justice, we often create a sense of injustice in those who have wronged someone and got punished for it.” She paused. “I am not afraid of threats when they aim at me, and I never have and I never will. But I have a small family and only one son. I had him when the first wizarding war had just ended and when I was very busy putting Death Eaters behind bars. And some of those Death Eaters I wasn't able to convict.”

The clicking slowed down, almost timid now, as if finally realizing that the people in this room were real. Real, and made of flesh and memories and fears, and that they had lives, or used to have some, or hoped to live again one day.

“When your job requires you to make enemies of the worst and darkest wizards of our age, you take extreme measures to protect those you love. I taught my son the Legilimens spell so he would always know people's intentions in case he needed it,” continued his mom while he stiffened, frozen in his seat, strangely removed from the situation, but feeling like his mom was talking to him and him alone. “Families are all we have. The families we are born into or the families we choose. Teaching a child to read minds may seem excessive and terrifying, but, in real life, it is just as understandable as protecting someone we love by using an Unforgivable Curse.”

The silence that followed was a deadweight on Jaebum's case.

Searching around with his eyes, Jaebum grew tighter and tighter in the face. His cheeks hollowed. Sucked in.

He used to be a nice guy once.

Jaebum let out a nasal noise as he thrashed the wand in the air.

“But he's a Death Eater!” he wrote. “I only did what was right!”

“Your Honour,” said Minhyuk quietly, not looking at the judge. Not looking at Hyungwon anymore, either. “I am not, and was not, a Death Eater. The file you are holding right now proves it with numerous evidence. I was born to into a Death Eater family. Yes. But they are not a family I chose.”

More _aaah_ -ing.

The judge drew in a long breath. He tapped the gavel against the sound block.

“That concludes the case.”

 

 

Hyungwon stayed behind only long enough to hear the verdict. The parties settled on probationary punishments: Minhyuk was ordered to lay off Quidditch for a year for using the Unforgivable Curse, Jaebum was forbidden to travel outside the country for the same time period for instigating the attack.

A member of the jury brought up the possibility to jail Jaebum for the damages caused to Hyungwon, but, after thinking it over for a minute and weathering Minhyuk's urging glare, Hyungwon decided not to press charges.

Judging from the cold loathing that seeped from Jaebum and Minhyuk alike, it wasn't the solution they'd wished for. Each of them still reckoned himself absolutely justified in their action and absolutely right in the grand scheme of things. And, in their own ways, Hyungwon had to admit that they were.

(Somewhere in a very grey zone of morals. But they were.)

He met up with his mother outside the courtroom. He didn't know what to say as he tried to read her face.

“That was pretty sentimental what you said inside,” he threw in, testing the waters.

“Of course it was sentimental. You and your lover boy weren't exactly doing a great job of getting him out of this mess until I came out with violins and tears.”

Hyungwon snorted. Then frowned. “He's not my lover boy.”

“Whatever he is to you and whatever you are to him, it doesn't matter. I'm just glad that he's out.”

“Why, though?” asked Hyungwon after a short delay.

His mom put on a pair of dove grey gloves. “Because he brought you back to me.”

 

 

“This is fucking ridiculous.”

Kihyun chuckled while Hyungwon seethed. His long fingers trembled as he physically held himself from crumpling today's edition of the Daily Prophet into a marble-sized ball and setting it on fire. And then, while it burned and blazed, from throwing it at Kihyun.

“You find it funny?” he snapped at the small Slytherin.

“I don't find it _not_ funny,” replied Kihyun, chuckling some more as he daintily took the newspaper out of Hyungwon's deathly clutch and smoothed its edges. The tiny task distracted him and created a focused crease on his forehead. Once his eyes stuttered over the headline, though, he was all grins and sparkling silver teeth again. “I never would have thought that the Daily Prophet would one day write about your love life. Never in a million years.”

“First of all, asshat, I don't _have_ a love life. And second of all, they are really milking this story for what it's worth and what it's _not_. They are completely twisting it! They're making me and Minhyuk into some kind of star-crossed lovers!”

Kihyun's snort grew softer. So did his gaze, conveying to him an unsaid “But aren't you?”

Hyungwon snatched the paper from his hands and bunched it up for real. He didn't stop until it was tight and hard and microscopic in his healthy palm. He aimed the ball above Yoongi's head, sending the it like a missile over the sleepy Slytherin's without even stirring his attention. The crumpled up Daily Prophet ended in a happily crackling fireplace and burst into flames.

Now if only Hyungwon could throw Kihyun just as easily.

“...Detective Chae defended his wrongfully accused lover with tears quivering in his big, beautiful eyes...” teased Kihyun, quoting the article. He said it in a phony tone that made Hyungwon's skin crawl because it reminded him of the reporter who had once interviewed him.

“There were no tears quivering in my eyes,” he said darkly. “Tears can't even quiver.”

“But you _do_ have big, beautiful eyes. So what's the truth?” countered Kihyun with a serious expression, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “You can't deny this guy's credibility.”

“The truth is that I will personally strangle the scribbler who wrote this.”

“No, you won't,” said Kihyun softly.

Hyungwon pulled a face. “No, I won't,” he repeated after Kihyun, though he took care to sound very unhappy about it. “But I would watch someone else do it.”

“Well. Don't say that in front of Minhyuk because he just might.”

“I haven't seen him since the trial and I assume I won't see him ever again unless he gets into trouble.”

“That's been... close to three months, though.”

“Yes.”

“You haven't met up once?”

“No.”

“You haven't tried to contact him?”

“No. And he hasn't tried to contact me either.”

“That so?”

“Yes. That so.”

“I thought he invited you to the charity thing.”

“What charity thing?”

He realized that he shouldn't have asked. What Lee Minhyuk the Freed Man was doing these days with his too-free time was none of his concern.

“You know how they ordered him not to play Quidditch professionally for a year?”

“Yes, Ki, I know. I was there,” he said dryly.

“So. Min kind of decided to – how did he phrase it? – fuck that verdict up the ass and throw his own little Quidditch match at Hogwarts for the kids and visitors. And whatever the adults bet on the results, the money will go to orphanages opened after the war.”

Hyungwon gaped. “Is the great oaf going to play against himself?”

“No, you _other_ great oaf. He's taking the whole Puddlemere United, a couple of Falmouth Falcons, and some veterans who haven't played in over a decade. Apparently he's doing it as a – how did he phrase it again? – as a divine fuck-you to people who wreaked havoc after he got released and wanted him to go back behind bars. He's _killing them with kindness_.”

“I thought that was moreso your discipline.”

Kihyun grinned. “I'm very kind. I'm going to take you as my plus one if you say pretty please.”

“Why would I go when I wasn't invited? Besides, isn't Hoseok your plus one?”

“Please. My husband got his own invitation. We are no beggars.”

Hyungwon's grimace soured. “Does that make me the beggar?”

“You could beg a little.”

“That's too bad. I have no reason to go.”

“Of course you do. You'll see him if you go.”

His expression wilted. “That's the biggest reason _not_ to go.”

Kihyun went quiet. In his seat, Yoongi catalogued a stack of papers and parchments where they belonged without acknowledging that there were two more people in the office with him. The smouldering remnants of today's edition of the Daily Prophet gave one last hiss and scattered into coal-black ashes.

“You could go as one of the veterans,” proposed Kihyun, shrugging his narrow shoulders. He gestured to Hyungwon's useless arm. “You've got that title twice.”

Yeah. That he had.

 

 

It was a rare feeling to be relieved to spot Kihyun amongst other faces. The Slytherin lit up and waved at him, beckoning him to come closer.

Hyungwon followed that fluttering hand like it was a lighthouse. The Quidditch field locker room had yet to seem so claustrophobic and crowded to him. Hogwarts had shrunken somehow. Or he had grown.

“Hey,” he greeted Kihyun when he finally weaved his way through the rambunctious crowd.

“Well, hello there. Come sit with us in our snake pit,” said Kihyun pleasantly and patted the vacant bench seat beside him.

Hyungwon gave him a bemused smile. There was only one seat left beside Kihyun, at the very end of the bench. The rest of the benches groaned and curved under dozens of well-fed, well-trained bodies and their gear. People around him were dressing and undressing and comparing broomsticks, like back in the day when, oddly, they used to care for the same things as they did now. Sports. The newest racing model. Laughter and fame.

Maybe they hadn't really grown that much.

Hyungwon gave the group a once-over, pausing gratefully at Hoseok's lovely face amongst all the Slytherins. He could hear Hyunwoo there somewhere too – probably in the showers.

“I won't sit down, thank you,” said Hyungwon, his gaze finding Kihyun again. “I think I'll go and find a spot on the tribunes before people start to pour in.”

“A clever idea,” commented Kihyun. He stopped patting the vacant seat and began to pat Hoseok's smooth thigh instead. “Grab me a seat while you're at it?”

“You won't play?”

“Please. When we were sixteen, I could sort of hide that I'm smaller than everyone, but I don't think it's going to work anymore. I'm still the same size while everyone else is...” he trailed off and gestured to his huge, beaming husband, to Hyungwon with his impressive height, and to Minhyuk, who was sprawled on the bench and leaning back so his shoulders stretched out broader than usually.

“We get it, Ki,” Minhyuk chipped in. “If I were you, I'd be afraid too. Afraid that someone's going to mistake me for the Golden Snitch.”

“Sod off,” smiled Kihyun.

“Sodding off!” said Minhyuk, saluting, and rose to his feet. “I have to check on some stuff before we start anyway.”

“What stuff?” asked Hoseok innocently.

“Just. Stuff.” He glanced up at Hyungwon. “You were going too?”

He couldn't quite well say no, not with the expectant, shit-eating expression Kihyun was giving him. He bowed his head once in a reluctant nod and followed Minhyuk outside. They had to join forces to made their way through the bustle of bodies that weaved and waved like a verdant tuff of algae moving in an undercurrent flow.

Outside it was sunny. A sheet of white light was beating down on the field and bleachers and Quidditch towers. No sight of shadow anywhere. It was noon, and the charity match was about to start in an hour or so.

“Wanna go with me?” asked Minhyuk as he turned over his shoulder, the protective pads again making him broader. Boyish.

“Depends on where we're going.”

“Just to the other side of the field. To check on the Bludgers and see if anyone has tampered with them.”

“Why would anyone tamper with them?”

“I don't know.” His lips curled like he _did_ know. It didn't take him long to spill. “We used to do it when we were kids. We would tap the thing a little and wait for it to go amok on the Gryffindors,” he grinned.

“Somehow, that doesn't really surprise me,” commented Hyungwon as they strode across the field. The lawn underneath his feet had rusted over the years of being under direct sunlight. He spotted one or two peaking heads of daisies and his chest clenched at how unkept the place had become. Unkept, but still riddled with life and sun.

“Is there even anything that would surprise you about me at this point?” Minhyuk played along.

The lack of malice in his tone, the softness, actually cracked Hyungwon enough to give it a thought.

The man beside him was a Slytherin who couldn't bring himself to hate anyone, threw charity events, and could love for a decade without a word back. He had an exhibitionist streak, but got shy the morning after. He said words that cut, but cut himself more in the process. He ran from what was bad _and_ good in him because he didn't believe he could be either.

He hadn't reached out to Hyungwon after the trial despite talking to him with his eyes even now, talking with his thoughts because he knew that although Hyungwon couldn't hear them anymore, they still weren't unheard.

Hyungwon coughed to bury the short silence that had sneaked between them.

They stopped at the other end of the field. Minhyuk got down to his knee and opened a large, shaking chest. The balls that were stored inside rattled, sentient, sensing the breeze and sunlight and thrashing in their secured sockets to get out. Soar. Fly.

“Looks like everything's fine,” remarked Minhyuk after he'd inspected both of the Bludgers. He took a minute to turn the Quaffle in his hands as well, then nodded. “No foul play.”

“I still don't get why anyone would want to tamper with the balls. This is supposed to be a benefit match.”

“Yeah, but I'm the one throwing it. Some people still aren't happy about it.” He straightened up. A sheen of sweat had begun to break on the nape of his neck as he'd hunched over the wooden chest. “About me being out, I mean.”

“Well, what can they do? Justice is justice.”

“Technically, they could make living here a hell for me. I've heard of people who had to emigrate because of the public whiplash.”

“It's not like you would run for the first time, is it?”

Minhyuk locked eyes with him, for a moment, fleetingly, and then he turned away with a sheepish smile.

“Yeah. It's not.”

Bulgaria. Austria. Minhyuk had travelled out of the country before, for one reason or other. Always running. Always returning.

“So. Austria, huh?” drawled Hyungwon. He elaborated when he noticed Minhyuk's confusion. “That's where you moved after the war, right?”

“Oh. Yeah. For a little bit, yeah.”

“Did you learn to speak German while you were there?”

“Sure,” said Minhyuk. He propped himself against the tower wall. “Ich liebe dick.”

“ _Dich._ It's _dich._ ”

“I said what I said.”

Hyungwon snorted. “It's _ich liebe dich_ ,” he insisted, and his stubbornness wouldn't have been there if he hadn't wished so bad to at least one time silence Minhyuk's silliness somehow. Anyhow.

“Oh? I didn't know you loved me back,” said Minhyuk.

The anticipated laughter never came.

“I don't,” said Hyungwon thickly.

Minhyuk's smile mellowed. It was smaller now. But stronger.

“I know.” He hefted his broomstick to busy his hands. “I know you don't. And it's alright.”

“Ten years, though,” blurted Hyungwon, then stopped himself. He had no right to ask why. Did he?

“It sounds more embarrassing when you say it out loud,” chuckled Minhyuk. He was still staring straight at Hyungwon, baring everything to him as he always had. As he always would.

He always would, and knowing that was more than Hyungwon could ask for.

Letting out a shivering breath, Hyungwon looked up.

“So. Ten more?”

Minhyuk looked at him as though he'd just found a bunch of first snowdrops. Lighted up. All up.

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I lurk [here](https://twitter.com/mrtvej_pes).


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